‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ unite for a record-breaking $205M weekend

Hello! Welcome to The Box Office Report for the weekend of July 26-28, 2024.

1. Deadpool & Wolverine

Weekend gross: $205M
Total domestic gross: $205M
Last weekend: New release
Percent drop: NA

What a weekend for Marvel Studios. As if revealing that Robert Downey Jr. was coming back to the MCU to play Doctor Doom in the next two Avengers movies wasn’t enough, the studio reestablished its box office dominance with Deadpool & Wolverine.

After the disappointment of The Marvels last year, the MCU went on an extended break. That pause, along with the with introduction of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine into the cinematic universe, resulted in a massive $205 million opening weekend for Deadpool & Wolverine.

“Disney probably doesn’t want me to frame it this way, but I’ve always thought of Deadpool & Wolverine as the first four-quadrant, R-rated film,” Reynolds told The Hollywood Reporter. “Yes, it’s rated R, but we set out to make a movie with enough laughs, action and heart to appeal to everyone, whether you’re a comic book movie fan or not.”

Here’s how big that opening weekend is …

• It’s the eighth biggest opening weekend, passing Black Panther’s $202 million. Disney is responsible for eight of the nine movies to open with at least $200 million. Six of these films are MCU entries and two of them are Star Wars movies, with the odd man out being Universal’s Jurassic World.
• It’s the biggest opening weekend for an R-rated movie. This one isn’t even close, with Deadpool & Wolverine blowing away the $132.4 million that the original Deadpool opened with in 2016.
• Deadpool & Wolverine already finds itself at No. 27 out of the 34 MCU films on the domestic box office chart, making more in one weekend than films like Thor ($181 million), Ant-Man (180.2 million), Captain America: The First Avenger ($176.7 million), The Incredible Hulk ($134.8 million) and The Marvels ($84.5 million) did their entire runs.
• If we’re comparing Deadpool & Wolverine to the defunct Fox X-Men franchise, its domestic haul is already bigger than all but six of the films in that franchise. Bigger than the original X-Men ($157.3 million). Bigger than X-Men: First Class ($146.4 million). Definitely bigger than The New Mutants ($23.9 million).

The MCU should be set up for a new run of box office success with Captain America: Brave New World, the mysterious Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps on the horizon. In the meantime, does Deadpool & Wolverine have the juice for a $100 million second weekend?

2. Twisters

Weekend gross: $35.3M
Total domestic gross: $154.9M
Last weekend: 1st
Percent drop: 57

There was no world where Twisters wasn’t going to drop to No. 2 this weekend. Not while facing down Deadpool & Wolverine. It was still a good weekend for Twisters, though, with the film adding $35.3 million to its domestic haul. It’s already the ninth biggest movie in North America for 2024, jumping past A Quiet Place: Day One ($134.2 million) and setting its sights on Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ($170.9 million).