It’s finally here. After being delayed by the SAG-AFTRA strike and leaving the box office to suffer through a miserable May, Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine” is here to deliver the biggest opening weekend the film industry has ever seen from an R-rated movie.
How big it will be is still difficult to determine. Projections for the film have stayed firm at a spectacular $170 million for the past couple of weeks. Not only would that break the R-rated opening weekend record held by the first “Deadpool” with $132 million, it also would be the highest opening weekend seen by any film since fellow MCU film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” opened to $181.3 million in November 2022. It is even about to top the opening weekend of “Barbie.”
But meeting tracking would be more than enough to make “Deadpool & Wolverine” a resounding victory for Marvel and Disney after a turbulent 2023. Though it was not without success — “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” pulled in $845. million — 2023 also saw “The Marvels” suffer the ignominy of becoming the first film in the franchise to fail to gross $100 million in North America.
Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and director Shawn Levy may even reach greater heights, as exhibitor sources say that an opening north of $200 million is not off the table. For Marvel fans, the excitement for this film is reminiscent of the 2021 megahit “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which shocked the industry as it opened to $260 million amid a surge in COVID-19 infections that was believed to have affected ticket sales for other holiday films.
Of course, it’s not a direct comparison. “No Way Home” was PG-13, while “Deadpool & Wolverine” is gleefully R with plenty of cartoonish gore and bawdy humor. For the millions who will show up this weekend and likely in subsequent weekends to spot the references they missed, this is a bug, not a feature.
Still, that R rating could put a ceiling on the film’s grossing potential. According to exhibitor sources, presales for “Deadpool & Wolverine,” while significantly higher than for past “Deadpool” films, is 5% below that of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and 23% behind “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which opened to $187.4 million.
This doesn’t preclude a $200 million-plus opening. With opening night word of mouth likely to be strong and an onslaught of surprise cameos from 20th Century Fox-produced Marvel films slipping out onto social media, there’s a strong chance that walk-up ticket sales will see a big boost come Saturday afternoon, or possibly even Friday evening.
The successful films this summer — including “Inside Out 2,” “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” and most recently “Twisters,” have seen robust walk-up traffic once positive opening night buzz began to spread. In the case of “Bad Boys 4” and “Inside Out 2,” there was particularly strong walk-up from Latino audiences, which exhibitor data suggests tends to skew more towards buying tickets at the theater rather than in advance.
The current rate of presales should serve as a reminder that “Deadpool & Wolverine” is just as likely to have a “Multiverse of Madness”-esque box office run as it is to exceed it. It’s so hard to tell at this point because there has never been an R-rated film with this much hype behind it, fueled by a meta encounter that Deadpool’s fans have been dreaming of since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox five years ago.
It is fitting that one of the early cameos in the film — minor spoiler here — involves Deadpool being rejected from the Avengers, because we’re about to find out whether the snarky mercenary’s brand of ultra-violence can rival the theatrical drawing power of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
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