‘Deadpool’ Slices and Dices the BOx Office Competition

The $135 million opening weekend of Deadpool shattered a ton of of box office records, among them, biggest R-rated movie opening of all-time, biggest February opening, and biggest opening for Fox. And considering how badly 20th Century Fox botched the Deadpool character in X-Men: Origins: Wolverine, we should be thankful Reynolds got to make a movie that was consistent with the tone of the character in the comic books, while also sporting a rating that didn’t water down the material in an awkward attempt to appeal to all audiences. Batman V Superman is expected to take in about $150 million domestically in its opening weekend (albeit by the same experts who projected $75 for Deadpool, so take that for what it’s worth), but that movie cost about four times what it took to make Deadpool. It marks the biggest R-rated opening, beating “The Matrix Reloaded” which opened with $91.8 million in 2003, AceShowbiz reports. But studios would be well advised to be cautious about just throwing in extra flesh and violence, getting an R-rating, and hoping to magically have the same success.

Record run… Ryan Reynolds as superhero Deadpool.

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. But that wasn’t the case for Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. It felt more like what we’d see from a solo Disney/Marvel superhero movie. But “Deadpool” is not your typical Marvel movie. The film has made $256.1 million worldwide. Internationally, the Merc with a Mouth went big on 232 IMAX screens grossing $8.9 million for the long weekend, $7.9 million without the Monday. That movie, in which Reynolds was just one of several supporting super-players to Hugh Jackman’s lead, grossed $18.6 million total in Australia. Perhaps a more impressive record for Deadpool is the largest opening ever at Twentieth Century Fox, topping the $108.4 million opening of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith back in 2005.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest film is still chugging along and landed in fifth place with $6.9M for a new domestic total of $159.16M off of a $135M budget.