Box office: Deadpool & Wolverine breaks another R-rated record

The superhero action comedy passed The Passion of the Christ this week to become the biggest R-rated movie in North America before adjusting for inflation. Next up: the worldwide record held by Joker.

Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) on a Disney+ TV set—well, sort of; it’s the Time Variance Authority—in Deadpool & Wolverine.

Well that didn’t take long.

The love fest for pre-MCU Marvel superheroes continued this weekend, as Deadpool & Wolverine grossed another $97 million and raised its North American total to $395.6 million after just ten days—quickly becoming the 2nd-biggest movie of the year (behind Inside Out 2) and the top-grossing R-rated movie of all time in North America (beating the record set 20 years ago by The Passion of the Christ).

The film still has a few records left to conquer. For starters, it is currently only the 3rd-highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time worldwide, behind 2019’s Joker and last year’s Oppenheimer—and it could very easily pass both films by next week. It might also have a shot at passing Inside Out 2 to become the top movie of the year… but despite its bigger start, it’s already showing weaker legs. So, we’ll see.

All of this is before we adjust the figures for inflation, of course. Once we do that, it turns out Deadpool & Wolverine is currently just one of the top twenty R-rated movies of all time in North America—but it should be in the top ten by next week. Will it get much higher? Probably not. The top spot currently belongs to 1973’s The Exorcist, which has grossed the equivalent of just over $1 billion in today’s dollars.

But hey, one milestone at a time.

Meanwhile, there were a few other noteworthy developments this week:

• Trap had the 2nd-worst opening of any M. Night Shyamalan film since The Sixth Sense established his brand a quarter-century ago.

• Inside Out 2 is now one of the top ten films of all time worldwide.

• Harold and the Purple Crayon, the first live-action film from Carlos Saldanha—who previously directed seven animated films for 20th Century Fox, including one of the biggest international hits of all time—flopped.

• A Christian film produced by The Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Falun Gong new religious movement, cracked the top ten.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: