Box office: Marvel’s ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ set to destroy R-rated records with $438 million global opening

July 2024 ended on an extreme high note at the box office with the return of Marvel Studios and the biggest opening weekend in theaters since “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in late 2022. Read on for the weekend box office report.

The big hurdle facing Marvels’ “Deadpool and Wolverine,” teaming the popular Marvel characters played by Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman with a ton of surprise cameos, was that it was being released with an R-rating, and it was a fairly HARD R with lots of swearing and bloody violence. Some thought that might hurt the movie’s box office chances, but after ending up with 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, things generally were looking up as soon as the movie opened.

The movie pulled in $38.5 million in Thursday previews, just below 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” which went on to open with $257.7 million back in the summer of 2018. It also made $64 million overseas in earlier showings before the weekend. “Deadpool & Wolverine” went onto make $96 million on its opening Friday, including those previews, and Disney has estimated an opening weekend of $205 million, only the ninth film ever to open with more than $200 million and the first R-rated movie to achieve that opening milestone. That’s also the biggest opening for a July release, surpassing the $191 million opening for “The Lion King” in 2019, and the eighth-biggest all-time domestic opening for any movie.

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“Deadpool and Wolverine” only needs to make another $165.6 million in North America to surpass the take of the highest-grossing R-rated movie domestically, that being the $370.8 million made by Mel Gibson‘s “The Passion of the Christ” back in 2004. The original “Deadpool” movie made just below that amount with $363 million domestic, so that should be passable as well. In fact, “Deadpool and Wolverine” is set to break just about every record for an R-rated movie, although we’ll have to give it some time to pass the $1.06 billion grossed by Joaquin Phoenix‘s “Joker” worldwide in 2019.

Overseas, “Deadpool and Wolverine” opened with $233.3 million internationally for a global opening of $438.3 million in less than five days. Audiences generally loved the movie, going by its “A” CinemaScore and the 97% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Also this weekend, Marvel Studios held its semi-annual Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con where it announced what’s to come in the future, which includes Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU as Doctor Doom in two Avengers movies, planned for release in 2026 and 2027.

With little chance of holding up against a new Marvel movie, the action reboot “Twisters” dropped to second place with $35.3 million, down 58% from its opening weekend, while bringing its domestic total to $154.9 million in its first ten days.

Universal’s hit animated sequel, “Despicable Me 4,” dropped to third place with $14.2 million, down 42% from last weekend, as it brough its domestic total to an estimated $290.8 million. It probably will hit the $300 million milestone sometime in the next week or so, making it the fourth movie in this particular franchise to hit that mark. The animated sequel made another $37.6 million overseas, where it’s destroying with another $386.7 million for a global total of $677.7 million.

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That still pales in comparison to Disney-Pixar’s own hit sequel “Inside Out 2,” which crossed the $600 million mark domestically last week, and added another $8.3 million this weekend in 3,150 theaters to bring its domestic total to $613.4 million. It has also passed both “Incredibles 2” and “Frozen 2” to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time domestically. It added another $22.6 million overseas this weekend, for an international total of $892.2 million and a global total over $1.5 billion.

Neon’s mega-hit thriller “Longlegs,” starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage, continued to do well, even against bigger blockbusters, taking fifth place this weekend with $6.8 million (down 43%) to bring its domestic total to $58.6 million. It has surpassed the $53.4 million made domestically by the Best Picture-winning “Parasite” to become Neon’s highest-grossing domestic hit.

“A Quiet Place: Day One” added another $3 million to its domestic take in 1,932 theaters, as it dropped to sixth place with $134.2 million after five weekends in theaters.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” remained in seventh place with $1.3 million, and while it’s passed the $200 million mark internationally, it only has made $191.8 million domestically, so it will end up behind 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life.”

Starring Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullaly, and Sheryl Lee Ralph, Jocelyn Moorhouse‘s comedy “The Fabulous Four” opened in 1,045 theaters this weekend with horrid reviews, and it only managed to make $1 million this weekend, to open in eighth place.

“Fly Me to the Moon” lost over 2,000 theaters in its third weekend, causing it to drop like a moon rock to ninth place with $750,000, down a shocking 77% from last weekend to bring its domestic total to $19.1 million.

Focus Features released Sean Wang‘s Sundance Audience Award-winning coming-of-age film, “Dìdi (弟弟)” into five theaters in New York and L.A., ahead of its nationwide release on August 16, where it brought in an estimated $200,000, averaging $40k per location.

There probably won’t be much competition for this week’s box office prediction game, since most players had the top five in the correct placement, including “Deadpool and Wolverine” opening in first place with more than $125 million.

Eight players got perfect scores in the July 19 game, but only “Vahniteja” used their Super Bet wisely to score the most points with 24,200, which was even more than the 21,500 scored by board leader “MellowDrama” going five-for-five.

On Friday, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan returns with his latest thriller, “Trap,” starring Josh Hartnett, and we’ll discuss it more in the weekend preview on Wednesday. Also, this week, look for our monthly box office preview for the upcoming month of August.

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