This image released by 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios shows Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson, left, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in a scene from “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
| Photo Credit: JAY MAIDMENT
Disney’s latest MCU film, Deadpool & Wolverine, had a better Sunday than anticipated. The comic book film earned $211 million in its first weekend in North American theatres, Disney said Monday.
That’s $6 million more than was estimated on Sunday, putting Deadpool & Wolverine in a different league. It had already broken the record for an R-rated movie. But the Shawn Levy-directed film starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman now boasts the sixth-highest opening weekend of all time, surpassing Jurassic World which opened to $208.8 million in 2015.
The Walt Disney Co. can now claim five of the six biggest box office openings ever, not accounting for inflation, including two Avengers movies, Endgame and Infinity War, and two Star Wars films, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. The only outlier is the second-place holder Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was released by Sony and produced by Marvel Studios.
Deadpool & Wolverine‘s overperformance also boosted its global number to $444.3 million, surpassing Avatar: The Way of Water.
The Walt Disney Studios release arrived at a pivotal time for an industry grappling with box office returns that continue to run at a double-digit deficit from last year. Disney has played a vital role in the summer season, releasing the top movies in May (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), June (Inside Out 2), and now July.
The success is also an important moment for Marvel Studios, which has had several high-profile disappointments lately, most notably with The Marvels which opened to an MCU low of $47 million last November.
Superheroes have been struggling even more elsewhere: Sony, which reached a high point with Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.9 billion worldwide) had a new low with Madame Web, which barely crossed $100 million. Warner Bros. Discovery, after a string of disappointments with The Flash and Blue Beetle, is currently working on restarting their DC universe under the supervision of James Gunn.
Marvel’s savior came in the form of two characters who got their start outside of the MCU. Both Deadpool and Wolverine, played by Reynolds and Jackman, existed previously under the 21st Century Fox banner which for two decades had the rights to Marvel characters like the X-Men and Fantastic Four.
That changed when Disney acquired the studio’s film and TV assets in early 2019, and plans started to take shape of how all these characters would fit into Kevin Feige’s MCU. In some cases, as with Fantastic Four, Marvel Studios is starting fresh. With Deadpool & Wolverine, directed by Shawn Levy, the stars were as crucial as their characters.
