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“Deadpool & Wolverine,” a comic book adventure featuring two of Marvel’s most popular characters, is soaring at the box office.
Disney’s superhero sequel earned $205 million in its opening weekend, beating 2018’s “Black Panther” ($202 million) and ranking as the eighth-highest debut of all time behind 2015’s “Jurassic World” ($208 million) and 2012’s “The Avengers” ($207 million). Only nine movies in Hollywood history have crossed the $200 million milestone in their opening weekend. It also far surpassed 2016’s “Deadpool” ($132 million) in ticket sales, making it the highest-grossing R-rated opening weekend of all time. The 2018 sequel, “Deadpool 2,” grossed $125 million, making it the third-highest-grossing R-rated opening weekend of all time. Among other benchmarks for new releases, “Deadpool & Wolverine” had the biggest start of the year, beating another Disney film, Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2” ($155 million debut).
Internationally, “Deadpool & Wolverine” grossed $233.3 million for a staggering $438 million worldwide. The film, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, is already the sixth highest-grossing film of 2024 three days after its release. Disney spent roughly $200 million to produce the movie and another $100 million to promote it.
The third “Deadpool” movie (and the first film in the franchise) hits theaters this weekend. Marvel Cinematic Universe Deadpool & Wolverine, set to star a comic book character licensed by 20th Century Fox, was expected to gross $160-170 million at the box office. But that prediction was quickly overturned as die-hard fans avoided plot twists and major cameos and wanted to be the first to see Jackman’s gruff mutant Logan come out of retirement. The Shawn Levy-directed feature film is set to take box office to astronomical heights. On Friday alone, Deadpool & Wolverine made $96 million, more than most movies in 2024 will gross in their opening weekend.
“Deadpool & Wolverine” is a much-needed win for Marvel. After this weekend, the MCU First film series Disney has never grossed more than $30 billion worldwide. The comic book giant has churned out an unprecedented string of blockbusters across 33 movies in 15 years, but recent releases like “Eternals,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania” and “Marvels” have all flopped commercially. Part of the problem is that since the launch of its Disney+ streaming service, the studio has given audiences countless spinoffs, sequels and TV series on the big and small screens. In response, Disney CEO Bob Iger has said the MCU is “a game changer.” They are trying to reduce productionLast year’s strikes and other delays mean that “Deadpool & Wolverine” will be the only Marvel Studios film released in 2024, the first since “The Avengers” in 2012.
“The pandemic hasn’t slowed the box office success of big superhero films,” said David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consulting firm, pointing to the big 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). But Gross added that “lesser-known new releases are struggling.” It’s good to see some familiar names on the MCU’s upcoming roster. Last weekend, the studio announced at Comic-Con that “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. will appear. Returning to the role of villain Victor Von Doom In 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday.
This summer will also be a bounce-back year for Disney, long one of Hollywood’s leading studios but stumbling in 2023 after a string of blockbusters including “Indiana Jones and the Haunted Mansion” and “Wish” underperformed. So far in 2024, “Inside Out 2” has overtaken “Frozen 2” as the highest-grossing animated film of all time with $1.5 billion, while “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is closing in on $400 million worldwide. “Alien: Romulus” could bring another win to the Magic Kingdom in August.
Last weekend’s winner, “Twisters,” dropped to a distant second place as theaters devoted nearly all of their seats to “Deadpool & Wolverine.” The disaster blockbuster, starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos, grossed a still-solid $35.3 million, down 57% from its debut. To date, “Twisters” has grossed $154.9 million in North America and $221 million worldwide.
Elsewhere, continuing releases round out the box office rankings. Universal and Illumination’s “Despicable Me” took in $14.2 million in its fourth weekend, coming in at No. 3. The animated sequel has earned $290.9 million domestically and $677 million worldwide to date. “Inside Out 2,” the seventh film in the series, took in $8.3 million to come in at No. 4, bringing its domestic gross to $613.4 million.
Neon’s horror film “Long Legs” came in fifth with $6.7 million, boosting its North American gross to $58 million. It became Neon’s highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” which grossed $53.36 million in North America.
