Skip to main content

Will ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ break a major box office milestone?

Deadpool & Wolverine could be a massive hit at the box office

Deadpool in Deadpool and Wolverine.
Marvel

The excitement around Deadpool & Wolverine couldn’t be much higher, and now, we’ve got box office tracking that suggests that might be true. According to new reporting from Deadline, tracking for the movie has it smashing every box office record imaginable for an R-rated movie.

The report is based on early ticket sales and projections, but suggests that the movie could open to $350 million worldwide in its opening weekend. That would make it the highest worldwide opening of 2024 by more than $50 million over Inside Out 2, and roughly $160 to $170 million domestically.

That total would be a substantial increase over the haul for The Marvels, which made just north of $100 million in its opening weekend, and had some worried about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, the popularity of Deadpool and Wolverine was always going to make this a bigger release, and the promise that it may revitalize the MCU more generally has many fans intrigued. The movie could also have the biggest opening for an R-rated movie in history, surpassing the original Deadpool, which grossed $132 million during its first weekend.

Deadpool & Wolverine | Official Trailer | In Theaters July 26

Above $100 million, tracking becomes less precise, so it’s impossible to say for sure just how Deadpool & Wolverine will fly, but it surely doesn’t hurt that the movie is the only Marvel movie set to release in 2024.

It also doesn’t hurt that the initial reactions to the movie have been overwhelmingly positive, with critics praising it for both its heart and its sense of humor. Those initial reactions also promise a slew of cameos, some of which have been revealed in trailers, and many of which probably have not.

Joe Allen
Contributor

Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Charleston Post & Courier, and Paste Magazine.

Send all editorial inquiries HERE.

The best sci-fi shows streaming right now
From Lost to The Twilight Zone, these are the best sci-fi shows ever made
The cast of Lost.

Sci-fi television has been around since the earliest days of the medium, and it's evolved along with the rest of television. In every era, though, there have been great sci-fi shows that remind us of how well the genre can fit on television.

Great science fiction can reflect on the world we know, even as it expands our understanding of what's possible. Regardless of exactly what these shows are about, though, each of them tells their story in gripping fashion, taking full advantage of what TV is capable of.

Read more
‘The Brutalist’ director Brady Corbet says he’s made no money promoting the film
The director said that he makes more directing commercials than he does making movies.
Adrien Brody in The Brutalist

It can be wonderful to get nominated for a bunch of awards, but The Brutalist director Brady Corbet said that it's not exactly a profitable one. In an interview on WTF with Marc Maron, Corbet said that he hadn't actually made any money promoting the movie.

“This is the first time I’ve made any money in years,” Corbet said, saying that his first real paycheck in a long time came from directing three advertisements in Portugal. “Both my partner and I made zero dollars on the last two films we made. Yes, actually zero. So we had to just live off of a paycheck from three years ago and obviously, the timing during an awards campaign and travel every two or three days was less than ideal, but it was an opportunity that landed in my lap, and I jumped at it.”

Read more
John Malkovich said that he rejected Marvel movies prior to ‘Fantastic Four’ over low pay
He explained that Marvel movies took a lot of time, and he wanted to be paid accordingly.
John Malkovich in Fantastic Four

Over the course of its 15 years of existence, Marvel has lured a number of surprising actors into its orbit. We live in a world where Angelina Jolie and Harry Styles have both appeared in Marvel projects (actually the same one).

John Malkovich was one of the last Marvel holdouts, but that's changing with The Fantastic Four: First Steps. In an interview with GQ, Malkovich explained that he had been approached to do Marvel projects in the past, but had always turned them down.
“The reason I didn’t do them had nothing to do with any artistic considerations whatsoever,” Malkovich explained. “I didn’t like the deals they made, at all.”
He explained that he simply wanted more money to work through the conditions required to make a movie on this scale.
“These films are quite grueling to make…. If you’re going to hang from a crane in front of a green screen for six months, pay me. You don’t want to pay me, it’s cool, but then I don’t want to do it, because I’d rather be onstage, or be directing a play, or doing something else," he continued.
Malkovich is, perhaps unsurprisingly, playing villain Ivan Kragoff, also known as Red Ghost in the film. He explained that working on the movie was actually like stage work in some respects. "It’s not that dissimilar to doing theater,” he said, “You imagine a bunch of stuff that isn’t there and do your little play.”

Read more