“Deadpool & Wolverine,” a comic book adventure that pairs two of Marvel’s most popular characters, is turbocharging the box office.
Disney’s superhero sequel has collected $205 million in its opening weekend, ranking as the eighth-best debut of all time ahead of 2018’s “Black Panther” ($202 million) and behind 2015’s “Jurassic World” ($208 million) and 2012’s “The Avengers” ($207 million). Only nine films in Hollywood history have crossed the $200 million milestone in their opening weekends. Ticket sales also easily surpassed 2016’s “Deadpool” ($132 million) to set the record for the biggest R-rated opening weekend ever. The 2018 sequel, “Deadpool 2,” now stands as the third-biggest R-rated debut with $125 million. Among the newest installment’s many benchmarks, “Deadpool & Wolverine” landed by far the biggest start of the year, overtaking Disney’s Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2” ($155 million debut).
Internationally, “Deadpool & Wolverine” captured $233.3 million for a staggering global tally of $438 million. After three days of release, the film, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, is already the sixth-highest grossing of 2024. Disney spent about $200 million to produce and roughly another $100 million to promote the movie.
Heading into the weekend, the third “Deadpool” installment (and the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be headlined by comic book characters that were previously licensed to 20th Century Fox) was projected to gross $160 million to $170 million. Those estimates were quickly put to shame. That’s because ardent fans want to be among the first to see the film to avoid plot twists, major cameos and see Jackman’s gruff mutant Logan emerge from retirement, catapulting the Shawn Levy-directed tentpole to stratospheric box office heights. On Friday alone, “Deadpool & Wolverine” clawed up $96 million, more than most 2024 films earned in their entire opening weekends.
After this weekend, the MCU became the first film franchise ever to cross $30 billion globally. Even so, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a needed triumph for Marvel. Though the comic book behemoth has delivered an unprecedented string of blockbusters across 33 films over 15 years, more recent entries like “Eternals,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels” have misfired at the box office. Part of the problem is that since the launch of the Disney+ streaming service, the studio has inundated viewers with countless spinoffs, sequels and TV series on the big and small screen. In response, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger says the MCU is trying to reduce its output. Due to last year’s strike and other delays, “Deadpool & Wolverine” is 2024’s lone Marvel Studios movie — the first time that’s happened since 2012’s “The Avengers.”
“The pandemic hasn’t slowed the biggest superhero titles,” says David A. Gross of movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, noting the smash successes of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($1.91 billion), “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” ($956 million), “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” ($859 million) and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($846 million). Yet, Gross adds, “the less established and newer films have struggled.” So, it’s a good thing the MCU has familiar names on its upcoming call sheets. Over the weekend, the studio announced at Comic Con that “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. is returning to play the villainous Victor von Doom in 2026’s “Avengers: Doomsday.”
This summer also marks a return to form for Disney, which has long been one of the dominant Hollywood studios but stumbled in 2023 with a series of underperforming blockbusters including “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “The Haunted Mansion” and “Wish.” So far in 2024, “Inside Out 2” has overtaken “Frozen II” to stand as the highest-grossing animated film in history with $1.5 billion, while “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” neared $400 million globally. “Alien: Romulus” could deliver another win for the Magic Kingdom in August.
With movie theaters devoting nearly every auditorium to “Deadpool & Wolverine,” last weekend’s champion “Twisters” tumbled to distant second place. The disaster epic, starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos, brought in a still-solid $35.3 million, down 57% from its debut. To date, “Twisters” has generated $154.9 million in North America and $221 million globally.
Elsewhere, holdover titles rounded out box office charts. At No. 3, Universal and Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4” added $14.2 million in its fourth weekend of release. So far, the animated sequel has generated $290.9 million domestically and $677 million worldwide. “Inside Out 2” took fourth place with $8.3 million in its seventh outing, bringing its domestic tally to $613.4 million.
Neon’s horror sleeper hit “Longlegs” notched the fifth spot with $6.7 million, boosting its North American total to $58 million. It now ranks as Neon’s highest-grossing film of all time, outperforming the Oscar-winning “Parasite” with $53.36 million in North America.
From Variety US