Box office: Deadpool & Wolverine breaks all the records – okay, just some of them
Looks like Ryan Reynolds' "merc with the mouth" will finally take the R-rated box-office crown from The Passion of the Christ, possibly as soon as by next week.
What a difference fifteen years can make.
Back in 2009, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was widely considered something of a disappointment: still the worst-reviewed of the ten films in which the title character has appeared (whether in a cameo or as a protagonist), it was a sub-par spin-off for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine that also introduced Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool but, perversely, robbed “the merc with the mouth” (so called because, in the comics, he makes lots of jokes and speaks to the reader all the time) of his actual mouth. The film grossed $179.9 million in North America—which was good, considering that an unfinished version of the film had leaked online mere weeks before the film came out, but still a notable decline from the previous two X-Men movies. (The next solo Wolverine movie did even worse, despite the fact that it got much better reviews.)
Seven years later, Reynolds got to make a standalone spin-off of his own with 2016’s Deadpool—and this time, he played up the character’s talkative, quippy, fourth-wall-breaking nature, and in a movie that went hard for the R rating, to boot. The end result? His movie opened to a whopping $132 million—the biggest opening for an R-rated movie ever, and the biggest opening for any movie related to the X-Men franchise. In the end, it grossed $363.1 million—far more than any other X-Men film, and just a smidge less than The Passion of the Christ, the top-grossing R-rated movie of all time, as Deadpool himself noted in 2018’s Deadpool 2.
And now, eight years after he revitalized the character, Reynolds-as-Deadpool has reunited with Jackman-as-Wolverine for the first time since their first outing together, and the resulting movie, Deadpool & Wolverine, has outgrossed that earlier film’s entire North American haul in just one weekend, with a whopping $211 million debut. If the figures reported this morning stay as they are, the new film will have:
The biggest R-rated opening of all time (previous champ: Deadpool, as per above).
The biggest opening of any film with Wolverine (previous champ: X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006, $102.8 million).
The biggest opening of 2024 (previous champ: Inside Out 2, $154.2 million).
The 2nd-biggest opening of the decade (behind Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021, $260.1 million).
The 6th-biggest opening of all time (behind two Avengers films, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and two Star Wars films).
Where can it go from here? Good question.
Superhero movies tend to be front-loaded, and in the post-Covid era, every superhero movie that has opened north of $135 million (Spider-Man, Doctor Strange 2, Black Panther 2, Thor 4) has dropped 63-68% in its second weekend, even when the buzz was good. Top Gun 2 and Avatar 2 both had smaller debuts than those four films but kept audiences coming back week after week, until they soared past all those other films except for Spider-Man (which was truly huge). Barbie, Inside Out 2, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie also had smaller first weekends than the Doctor Strange and Black Panther sequels but legged it out to become much bigger hits overall.
So I don’t assume that Deadpool & Wolverine will beat Inside Out 2 to become the biggest movie of the year, even though it had the biggest opening. The two films represent very different genres with very different audiences that have very different moviegoing habits. But, anything’s possible.
Let’s put it this way: Less-highly-regarded superhero films like Black Widow, Venom 2, Ant-Man 3, Thor 4, Black Panther 2, and Doctor Strange 2 all made 42%-50% of their money in their first weekends alone. But well-received superhero films like Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Spider-Verse 3, The Batman, and Spider-Man 8 made only 32%-36% of their money in their first weekends alone. If Deadpool & Wolverine is one of the better-received films, then it could be looking at a grand total in the $585mil-$660mil range, like Barbie or Inside Out 2. But if it’s one of the not-so-well-received films, it could end up landing in the $420mil-$500mil range, like Black Panther 2.
One thing seems certain, at least. After 20 years, The Passion of the Christ will no longer be the top-grossing R-rated film of all time in North America. It could fall to Deadpool & Wolverine as early as next week. We shall see.
Meanwhile, a few other highlights from this week’s chart:
Inside Out 2 is now the top-grossing animated movie ever in North America.
Despicable Me 4 is now the 2nd-highest-grossing movie of the year… until it gets overtaken by Deadpool & Wolverine sometime in the next few days.
Longlegs is now the highest-grossing Nicolas Cage film since 2010’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and the top-grossing movie ever distributed by Neon.
And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title:
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