After a rather grim start to the year with several high profile flops, the 2024 box office has seen an injection of life the past couple of weeks, with Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die surprising last weekend and Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out 2 on course to deliver a bumper opening this time around. And, it seems exhibitors will continue smiling into July, as Deadline is reporting that Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine looks set to smash a number of records when it opens next month.
The Shawn Levy-directed film marks Marvel Studios’ only theatrical release of the year, as well as the MCU’s first R-rated movie, and the first to make full use of the X-Men rights secured by Disney’s 20th Century Fox acquisition. It also sees Hugh Jackman returning to his iconic Wolverine role to share the screen with Ryan Reynolds’ fan-favourite Merc with a Mouth, and so as you’d expect there’s certainly plenty of excitement for the multiverse-hopping film – so much so that it is comfortably on track for the biggest R-rated opening of all-time, as well as record high openings for its two leads.
According to early estimates six weeks out from release, Deadpool & Wolverine is looking at a domestic opening weekend of between $200 and $239 million – a figure which is described as “conservative”, with the film is said to be tracking higher than Spider-Man: No Way Home at the same stage pre-release back in 2021. For comparison, No Way Home opened to $260 million domestically and went on to gross $814.1 million in North America and a total of $1.922 billion worldwide.
SEE ALSO: Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman assemble for Deadpool & Wolverine trailer
The Deadpool franchise currently holds the record for the biggest R-rated domestic opening, the first movie having debuted to $132.4 million in 2016. That’s also Reynolds’ career-high opening in North America, while Jackman sits on $103 million from 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. The record for the highest-grossing R-rated movie belongs to Joker, with the DC film amassing $1.079 billion back in 2019 – a target Wade and Logan will surely have in their sights?
Deadpool & Wolverine is directed by Shawn Levy (Free Guy) and stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman alongside Fox/Marvel veterans Jennifer Garner (Elektra), Stefan Kapacic (Colossus), Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenage Warhead), Morena Baccarin (Vanessa), Karan Soni (Dopinder), Leslie Uggams (Blind Al), Shioli Kutsuna (Yukio), Lewis Tan (Shatterstar), Rob Delaney (Peter) and Aaron Stanford (Pyro), with new additions including Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) as Paradox and Emma Corrin (The Crown) as Cassandra Nova.
Deadpool & Wolverine is set for release on July 26th.
