Hugh Jackman has a new movie out for the holidays, and it has given the actor a massive milestone in his career. The weekend was almost completely dominated by Avatar: Fire and Ash, Zootopia 2, Marty Supreme, and Anaconda. However, there were some other holdovers from past weeks, including The Housemaid, the religious movie David, and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants. However, sitting in eighth place on the weekend box office was the new Hugh Jackman movie called Song Sung Blue. That film had a three-day weekend total of $7.65 million and an overall holiday weekend five-day total of $12 million.
However, the milestone was for what this did for Hugh Jackman’s career. With the $12 million opening weekend, Hugh Jackman surpassed the $6.5 billion mark at the worldwide box office for his career as a leading actor, via The-Numbers. This features several comic book movies, including Deadpool & Wolverine, which was his only film that surpassed $1.3 billion at the box office.
Song Sung Blue is a biopic based on a 2008 documentary following Mike and Claire Sardina, a couple who performed in the Neil Diamond tribute band called Thunder & Lightning. Jackman stars as Mike Sardina, while Kate Hudson stars as Claire Sardina. The movie also stars Jim Belushi, Michael Imperioli, Mustafa Shajir, Ella Anderson, and Fisher Stevens. The story follows Mike and Claire as they start their band, and it takes a dark turn when a car hits Claire, and she loses her leg. This leads to fighting, reconciliation, and an eventual heartbreaking ending.
While critics appreciated the film, with a 76% Rotten Tomatoes score and certified fresh, it has an almost perfect audience Popcornmeter score. The audience rating is at an incredible 98% fresh. When looking at the reviews for Song Sung Blue, the audience reviews praised the story, acting, and music. Both Jackman and Hudson performed all the Neil Diamond songs in the movie, and there are 16 different songs on the soundtrack. Kate Hudson was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance.
Hugh Jackman Has Been as Successful as a Singer as a Superhero
Of course, most of Hugh Jackman’s $6.5 billion box office totals over his career have been in superhero movies. The top five movies are all films in which he plays Wolverine in the X-Men movies. After Deadpool & Wolverine, the following four highest-grossing films are Deadpool 2 (in a cameo), X-Men: Days of Future Past, Logan, and X-Men: The Last Stand. The Wolverine ranks eighth, X-Men 2 in ninth, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 11th.
However, Hugh Jackman is more than a superhero in movies. The sixth movie in the list is the musical Les Misérables, with $435 million. The seventh-place movie is another musical called The Greatest Showman, with $428 million. In 10th place is Happy Feet, which is a movie about a dancing penguin, also playing a lot with the idea of music, and made $385 million. Those three movies alone added $1.248 billion to his total, proving that Jackman can sell films with his singing voice as much as he can with his claws and adamantium skeleton.
According to Deadline’s breakdown, Song Sung Blue had an audience that was 61% women and 94% over 25. Its main competition for this audience likely came from musical movies like Wicked: For Life or prestige releases like Marty Supreme. With that competition, it is impressive that it did as well as it did, and much of that lies at the feet of Hugh Jackman, as his new milestone proves.
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