“Deadpool” Continues to Demolish Box Office Records

The irreverent superhero movie, which stars Ryan Reynolds, debuted in the No. 1 slot, taking in an estimated $135 million at the box office for the three-day weekend. That beat the $85.2 million February record set previous year by “Fifty Shades of Grey”. It’s the biggest opening weekend ever for an R-rated comic book adaptation (300’s $70.8m was the previous holder there). Based on box office projections, Deadpool could end up with a total of $150 million over the four-day holiday weekend.

This holiday weekend, Reynolds’s new film – a little something called “Deadpool” – has not only recouped its modest $58-million production budget by its domestic debut alone.

Far behind in second place was “Kung Fu Panda 3” – Dreamworks’ computer-animated comedy that follows the adventures of Po as he evolves from martial arts student to teacher – which took in $19.7 million, industry tracker Exhibitor Relations said.

“Deadpool” has only been out in theaters since Thursday night, but box-office analysts have already realized they grossly underestimated the film’s performance.

And it’s a triumph for Reynolds, whose last superhero movie, “Green Lantern”, fizzled. “And rather than hurting, the R-rating actually helped”.

It’s not that R-rated superhero-world films haven’t before found success at the box office, of course. An underrated performer who has shown dramatic promise in the likes of Buried, he’s an actor just as capable of showing the (fleeting) vulnerabilities beneath Deadpool’s costume as he is spitting out the character’s brilliantly nasty profanities.

In third place, the R-rated Dakota Johnson and Rebel Wilson rom-com “How to Be Single” didn’t make any big waves with its $18.8 million out of the gates. The numbers are close to the original Zoolander’s, which opened up to $15.5 million in 2001. According to Box Office Mojo, the Ryan Reynolds movie earned $135 million, doubling the initial predictions of $65 million.

Logic would suggest that it should have made Wade Wilson radioactive as the subject for a solo movie, but here’s the thing: audiences are used to getting different versions of the same comic book characters (see: Batman) on the big screen.