Anarchic Marvel entry Deadpool made huge impression in its first weekend in theaters, raking in a project $150 million over the four-day President’s Day weekend. What’s startling is just how much ahead the Ryan Reynolds-headlined anti-superhero film was able to go from industry expectations. Distributor Fox had kept their projections for opening weekend at a fairly conservative $60 million opening while industry rivals were more in line with $80 million opener.
In reality, Deadpool blew everyone away with a performance that’s nearly unprecedented. For instance, the previous President’s Day weekend record holder was Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) which earned nearly $60 million less than Deadpool. Here’s a primer of some of the records broken by Deadpool‘s opening weekend:
- Highest opener for a R-rated film
- Highest opener in Fox’s history
- Highest opener for a film in the month of February
One thing that often confounds box office prognosticators from being able to predict massive weekend hauls like the one experienced by Deadpool is because they are so rare. It’s difficult to find comparisons when only a tiny handful of movies earn as much as Deadpool‘s eventual pull. There was also the considerations of the films’ R-rating and tougher to sell tone of the feature- Deadpool is raunchier and far rougher around the edges than standard comic book adaptations or successes.
Regardless of tracking, Deadpool‘s unexpectedly robust performance (along with it’s favorable reception) points well for the franchise in the future as it does for Fox’s cache in the Marvel world. Fox’s next “in-universe” film will be X-Men: Apocalypse due in theaters this summer; curiosity awaits to see if Bryan Singer’s next installment may receive a boost thanks to Deadpool.
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