Deadpool & Wolverine Record Breaking Opening Weekend! Will It Make $1 Billion?

Deadpool & Wolverine Record Breaking Opening Weekend! Will It Make $1 Billion? 

Deadpool & Wolverine opening weekend box office numbers are in. It’s a record shattering event, looks like it’s going to be the biggest opening weekend of 2024. What are the numbers? What records is the movie breaking? Let’s talk about it!

The Numbers: Deadpool & Wolverine, was always going to be a hit film. Nobody doubted the fact that the film wasn’t going to be a big hit film. About a month before the movie came out, the movie was projected to open between $200-$240 million in its opening weekend. Going into July, the numbers went down to $160-$165 million. This movie was certainly going to have a big opening and most likely have the biggest opening weekend of 2024. Domestically (in the United States), the movie opened to $211 million and it made $445 million worldwide, in just three days. It opened to what people were expecting. I was expecting it to be over $200 million, I wasn’t sure what the exact number would be. As a point of reference, this movie has the 6th biggest opening weekend of all time. It’s the fourth biggest opening for a comic book movie only behind Avengers Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Avengers: Infinity War. It had a great opening weekend, nobody should be surprised by this. Everybody was thinking this movie was going to open huge and it did. 

Records Broken: Naturally when a movie opens this big, it’s fun to see what records it has broken. Here’s a list of some of the more important ones. 

• Biggest Opening for a July movie, beating 2019’s The Lion King ($191.8 million)
• 6th Highest Opening Day with $96 million (Domestically)
• Biggest opening of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s career 
• Biggest global opening since Avatar: The Way of Water ($439 million)
• Biggest Domestic & Worldwide opening for an R-rated movie

Comparison to Deadpool & Deadpool 2: When you have a third film in a trilogy or a franchise, it’s always good to look and compare to the other films in the franchise. When Deadpool (2016) came out, it had the biggest opening for an R-rated movie, it made about $132 million. Deadpool 2 opened to $125 million. Both movies went on to make more than $730 million at the box office. At the time of their release, they were the highest grossing R-rated movies of all time. Since then, they’ve been surpassed by Joker and Oppenheimer. But they were still incredibly successful films, clearly people were excited about them and wanted them. When Deadpool & Wolverine opens to $211 million, that’s insane. Just comparing the film’s opening weekend’s box office sales is crazy. It just shows how much people were excited about Deadpool & Wolverine. 

Can It Make $1 Billion?: This is a question that everybody has been asking for a while now. Can the movie make $1 billion? In the history of cinema, only 53 movies have made over $1 billion. At first glance it seems like a great number, but when you consider how many movies come out every year and how long Hollywood has been making movies? Not that many movies have made $1 billion at the box office. Within those 53 movies, only one of them was rated-R, Joker. Because it's only been rated-R to make $1 billion, it does hurt and affect Deadpool & Wolverine chances of making $1 billion. BUT…I still think the film is going to make $1 billion. The movie has been open for three days and has grossed almost $500 million. That’s crazy, that’s insane to happen. Plus the movie opened over $200 million, every other movie to make over $200 million in its opening weekend made over $1 billion. Another thing to consider, there’s not much competition in the coming weeks. Honestly, I think Alien: Romulus is going to be the next movie to knock Deadpool & Wolverine out of the #1 spot. That’s not for three more weeks, this movie will make $1 billion. I think it will dethrone Joker as the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time. However, I don’t think it’ll be the highest grossing movie of 2024. Because Inside Out 2 has grossed $1.5 billion at the box office, it’s the second highest grossing animated movie of all time. Because this movie is rated-R, that cuts off a certain percentage of the audience from being able to see the film. It’ll probably be the second highest grossing movie of 2024 and the highest grossing comic book movie since Spider-Man: No Way Home.