Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine now holds the biggest opening for an R-rated film ever, beating the Merc with a Mouth’s previous record.
UPDATE: As America wakes, the box office numbers have been updated too. While it was originally thought Deadpool & Wolverine would clutch the eight biggest opening of all time, it’s now been confirmed that the film actually opened to $211 million in the US alone. This makes the film’s opening weekend the sixth highest grossing opening ever and brings the film’s total gross to $444.1 million.
Our original story follows…
29th July: I think we can all agree that Marvel has been in a bit of a rut recently. Films like The Marvels and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania performed below expectations, both with critics and audiences.
So Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel’s only cinematic effort this year, had a lot on its shoulders. It had to introduce the Merc with a Mouth and the most famous X-Men to the MCU, while not disgracing the latter’s lovely send off in 2017’s Logan as well as prove that Marvel was still the top dog in the game.
Well, it seems to have done just that. Over its first weekend in cinemas, Deadpool & Wolverine opened to a staggering $438.3 million worldwide. That’s the eight biggest opening of all time for any film and the highest opening for an R-rated film in the US. Of course, the previous record for that was held by the first Deadpool, which took home $133.7 million in the US on its first weekend. For comparison, Deadpool & Wolverine made $205 million in the US alone.
It’s a particularly impressive result when taking into account that as an R-rated film, the film’s audience is somewhat limited. Deadpool & Wolverine was released with the 15 certification in the UK, which means no one under the age of 15 can watch the film while in the US, the R-rating means anyone under 17 will need a parent or a guardian with them to watch the film, which goes hard with the violence and sexual remarks.
The film follows Wade Wilson aka Deadpool as he embarks upon a time-bending adventure with Wolverine. The film acts as a love letter to the bygone era of Fox X-Men films and includes more cameos than we could count, something we were a little critical about in our review of the film.
Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds, took to Instagram to thank the fans for showing up to watch the film all weekend long.
“This is kind of hard to process. But thank you to everyone who went to see the film this weekend,” Reynolds said on an Instagram story video.
