Deadpool & Wolverine’s Second Weekend
Deadpool & Wolverine followed up its record-breaking domestic debut (revised up to $211 million from the initially reported $205 million) with a second weekend take of $97 million that has raised its grand total to $396 million.
This works out to a 54 percent drop from the film’s first weekend gross to its second. This is not small — but it is also a good deal better than was seen for many past Marvel films (many recent installments having drops in the 60–70 percent range, and typically at the high end of that range), and the more surprising not only in light of this being a “threequel” with a massive debut, but the highly gimmicky and cult-y nature of the material. Indeed, the Boxoffice Pro forecast for the movie had a 50–60 percent range for the likely drop, resulting in an $80-$100 million take, so the movie did about as well as could be expected.
The result is that the movie that looked as if it could be “super front-loaded” may have decent legs after all. Based on that 54 percent number — which on the basis of comparison with other films suggests to me that the movie may have taken in just 65–70 percent of its final North American gross — it is not only clear that the movie will blast past the half billion dollar mark in North America, but I suspect it will end up in the $550-$600 million range. As the film has been doing more than equally well overseas (the international gross is in the vicinity of $428 million at last report) it seems certain to break past the billion-dollar mark as well, though by how much remains to be seen. Right now we have a 52/48 international/domestic split in favor of the international market, which, if it were to hold through the movie’s run, would (extrapolating from the “low” $550 million figure for North America) translate to a global finish in at least the $1.15 billion range. However, should the proportion end up matching that for Deadpool 2 (57/43 international/domestic), as the movie proves just that little bit leggier that would get it up to the $600 million North American finish, we could be looking at a global gross as high as $1.4 billion (so, more or less what I guessed back in June, it seems).
In either case we have a franchise best for the Deadpool and X-Men sagas. It would also be (Spider-Man apart) the MCU’s highest-grossing film since before the pandemic, in real terms. The movie would also beat Joker’s record for an R-rated film, if we leave inflation out of the matter, while should it reach the higher end of the $1.15-$1.4 billion range discussed here it will probably beat Joker in real, inflation-adjusted, terms as well.
No matter how you look at it, this one has been a winner commercially. However, I still stand by my earlier judgment that a Hollywood which has salivated after a hit like this one for quite some time is all too likely to draw the wrong lessons from it — seeing it not as a matter of a movie winning by giving audiences “something completely different” and especially by appealing deeply to a selected audience and pleasing them and not worrying about anyone else, but as a green light to just go on barraging audiences with superhero movies plain and simple, very likely to their cost.
Originally published at https://raritania.blogspot.com.
