Deadpool Smashes Records with $260 million Debut
Deadpool destroyed the competition, as well as a hell of a lot of bad guys, as it debuted to an estimated $135.1 million three day domestic weekend and around $150 to $156 million four day weekend. The film is now the most an R-rated film has debuted as well as a February film. This is also the highest opening for a 20th Century Fox film, the previous being Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The film has the record of largest single day in February, in fact all of its days beat the previous record.
The film also earned $125 million in international markets. The film scored the largest industry opening in Russia with $12.4 million as well as the largest Fox opening in 13 other markets including Australia ($10 million); Taiwan ($8.25 million); Brazil ($5.9 million); Hong Kong ($3.8 million); and Malaysia ($2.9 million).
The international amount and domestic puts the film at about $260 million for its first weekend, pretty impressive with a budget of about $58 million. We’ll see what lessons Hollywood learns from this. Maybe we’ll see more R-rated superhero films, but most likely the wrong lessons will be taken away.
In other debuts, How to Be Single came in third with $18.75 million; Zoolander 2 earned $15.65 million for fourth; Where to Invade Next was 18th with $1.03 million; and a few others were in the tens of thousands.
In other movie news Kung Fu Panda 3 dropped to second and earned $19.65 million to bring its domestic total to $93.9 million. The Revenant came in fifth and earned $6.9 million to have a domestic total of $159.2 million. Hail, Caeser! was in sixth and added $6.59 million to its total. Finally, Star Wars: The Force Awakens dropped out of the top five to come in seventh after nine weeks. The film earned $6.19 million to bring its domestic total to $914.8 million and worldwide gross to $2.03 billion. It sits in third for worldwide frosses of all time.
Kung Fu Panda 3 was the top of the box office for the second weekend in a row beating three new films that opened up. The film earned an estimated $21 million to bring its domestic total to $69.1 million. The film has earned $198.1 million worldwide so far after about two weeks.
The Revenant topped the box office this past weekend earning an estimated $16 million. The previous week it came in second. Star Wars: The Force Awakens moved up to second earning an estimated $14.257 million, and last week’s champ Ride Along 2 dropped to third earning an estimated $12.96 million. Three new entries filled fourth, fifth, and sixth place. Dirty Grandpa debuted with $11.525 million, The Boy earned $11.26 million, and The 5th Wave was sixth with $10.7 million.
It’d eventually happen, and this was the first weekend it was most likely to happen. Ride Along 2 was the top of the box office earning an estimated $34 million. That wasn’t close to the first film’s $41.5 million during the same weekend two years ago for the first film in the series. It was still enough to be in first place.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens continued to hold first place, fighting off The Revenant which beat expectations. Star Wars added $41.63 million to its total while The Revenant earned $38 million after expanding its theater count.