Deadpool Is The New February Box Office King
By Nick Tylwalk
It seems everyone was underestimating Deadpool just a bit. The Merc With a Mouth isn’t just off to an excellent start to his solo movie career, he’s officially the best thing ever to happen to movies opening in February, and by a wide margin.
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Despite most forecasts calling for around $80 to $90 million for its opening weekend, Deadpool has defied even the rosiest projections, with Variety reporting that it’s now expected to bring in $135 million in its first three days. That total would leave the previous record for a movie opening in February, $85,2 million by Fifty Shades of Grey last year, far in the distance.
It’s amazingly great news for Fox, which made the movie on a budget of only $58 million — though that doesn’t include the film’s promotional costs, which had to be considerable. That said, they certainly paid off, and anything the movie makes from here on out is pure profit.
The record start is also a considerable feather in the cap of star Ryan Reynolds. Trade publications are already saying that Deadpool has revitalized his career as a headliner, with ComScore analyst Paul Dergarabedian telling Variety that, “All it takes is one gigantic, massive, record-breaking movie to put a career back on track.”
This certainly qualifies for Reynolds, and it makes the film’s post-credits scenes less of a joke, because not only will there certainly be a Deadpool 2, it’s got to be a priority for Fox. It remains to be seen how X-Men: Apocalypse, the studio’s other 2016 superhero film, fares, but it’s safe to say that a second Wade Wilson solo outing might leapfrog whatever is planned next for the Children of the Atom.
What’s next for Deadpool trackers? Seeing how high it can climb in relation to other superhero movies, of course. It needs to make about $320 million to crack the top 10 of all-time, and with this kind of start, that seems not only possible, but likely.
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No one would have been saying that even a week ago. Maybe we shouldn’t make the mistake of selling Wade short next time out.