Deadpool & Wolverine reverses Marvel’s box-office slump with record opening

NEW YORK – Marvel Studios, trying to move past a pair of box-office humiliations, deployed two of its most popular characters over the weekend and hit a mother lode.

The potty-mouthed Deadpool and hard-drinking Wolverine – packaged together for the first time on movie screens – were on pace to sell roughly US$205 million (S$275 million) in tickets in the US and Canada, box-office analysts said on July 28, marking the biggest opening weekend so far in 2024.

Deadpool & Wolverine easily set a record for the largest R-rated movie opening in Hollywood history too, even when adjusting for inflation. The current record-holder, Deadpool (2016), arrived to more than US$175 million in today’s dollars.

Deadpool & Wolverine was expected to collect an extra US$233 million overseas, for a global total of roughly US$438 million after only 3½ days of play – a start on a par with Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022), which went on to sell about US$1 billion in tickets.

Directed by Shawn Levy, Deadpool & Wolverine cost an estimated US$320 million to make and market worldwide.

Marvel badly needed a win. Two of its 2023 releases, The Marvels and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, disappointed at the box office, ending a 15-year winning streak for the boutique studio and beginning a period of intense Wall Street scrutiny.

Marvel’s weakness played a role in proxy battles for Disney board seats earlier in 2024. In the end, Disney fended off the activist investors, including Mr Nelson Peltz, a founder of Trian Partners, and Mr Ike Perlmutter, the former chair of Marvel Entertainment.

Superheroes are not the sure things they used to be.

DC Studios, part of Warner Bros Discovery, is working on its fourth reboot strategy in eight years following disappointments like The Flash (2023), Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom (2023) and Blue Beetle (2023).

Sony has struggled with Spider-Man spin-offs like Madame Web (2024) and Morbius (2022).

The problem is that the movie and television marketplace is awash with the characters, and some of the most popular ones have been fully exploited – at least for now.

“Over the next few years, hopefully Marvel and DC can launch one or two big new series to sustain the genre,” said Mr David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box-office numbers. “Superheroes play well in all markets around the world. They’re extremely important to the business.”

Marvel movie plots have grown increasingly convoluted, at least for casual viewers. Deadpool & Wolverine has something to do with a “sacred timeline”, “anchor beings” and a “metaphysical graveyard” called the Void. (“Good luck if you are coming in with no prior knowledge,” Mr David Sims, a critic for The Atlantic, wrote in his review.) But it was mostly built as a love letter to Marvel fans – an effort to show die-hards that the studio had rediscovered its mojo.

In one scene, Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool, looks directly at the screen and says: “Nerds, it’s about to get good.” A bloody battle between Deadpool and Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, commences.

Reynolds’ family also make cheeky appearances in the film. His wife, American actress Blake Lively, has a cameo as “Ladypool” and their four children – daughters James, nine, Inez, seven, Betty, four, and son Olin, one – are all involved in the project to different degrees.

James is credited with playing a “Screaming Mutant” and Inez stars as a Deadpool variant called “Kidpool”, who has lines insulting her father’s character. Olin is credited as “Babypool“ in the film and his character even inspired a collectible popcorn bucket from American cinema chain Regal Cinemas.

And while Betty did not seemingly have scenes in the movie, according to a TikTok video of the film’s credits, she is given a shoutout as “Hugh Jackman Wrangler: Betty Reynolds”.

Ticket buyers gave Deadpool & Wolverine an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls. About 97 per cent of fan reviews on RottenTomatoes.com, a review-aggregation site, were positive. Only one Marvel movie, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), has scored better by that measure.

To support the movie’s release, Disney sent Reynolds and Jackman on an overseas publicity tour that stopped in China, South Korea, Brazil, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Perhaps to telegraph that this is not a movie for children, or perhaps because they simply felt like it, the stars peppered their public comments with expletives. Mr Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, was comparatively restrained, posting on Instagram that it was “one heck of a fun film”. Disney does not often release R-rated movies.

Mr Alan Bergman, the co-chair of Disney Entertainment, has now delivered three hits for the company in a row – a major turnaround from last summer, when Disney sputtered with The Marvels, the disastrous Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny and a dead-on-arrival Haunted Mansion.

In 2024, along with Deadpool & Wolverine, Disney has had Inside Out 2, with US$1.5 billion in ticket sales, and Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes, with about US$400 million. NYTIMES