‘Deadpool’ earned another $55 million (dropping 58% from its opening weekend), bringing its ten-day total to $235M. Last weekend, the R-rated comedy/action comic book adaptation, from 20th Century Fox, already bested the premiers of all the rest of Fox’s ‘X-Men’ movies and this total officially makes it the highest grossing ‘X-Men’ movie of all time, besting ‘X-Men: The Last Stand”s $234M and ‘X-Men: Days Of Future Past”s $233M. (These grosses are NOT adjusted for inflation and are only domestic.) Even more impressive, ‘Deadpool’, already perceived by the studio as a risk, only had a budget of $58M, roughly one-third that of any other ‘X-Men’ movie. And once again, ‘Deadpool’ did not have the benefit of a more inclusive PG-13 rating or expensive 3D tickets sales. (It does have a limited IMAX release to help pad things.)
Globally, ‘Deadpool’ is just shy of making $500M and it’s only in its second weekend. This is a rarity for an R-rated movie, nowadays, but ‘Deadpool’ is trailing last year’s ‘American Sniper’. But ‘Deadpool’ should have broader appeal so it may wind up topping that in the long run and doing better outside of the U.S.
Speaking of hanging in there, ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ continues strongly, once again landing the #2 spot in its third week, with $12.5M. With Easter approaching, there is a real lack of family-friendly fare in theaters, which this is delivering.
Speaking of Easter, Sony/Affirm’s ‘Risen’ starring Joseph Fiennes and directed by ‘Waterworld”s Kevin Reynolds went the go-to marketing route of recent faith-based films, courting Christian leaders (including The Pope!) and sending marketing materials directly to churches. The film was also marketed at Christian-based gatherings with television ads mostly reserved for conservative telecasts like The Republican debates and ‘American Idol’.
With its fairly meager $20M budget, its $11.7M 3rd place opening has already earned half of that back. And expect Sony to partner with Walmart for a grassroots home video release when the time comes.
The Sundance Award-winning low-budget horror flick ‘The Witch’ scored well enough to come in at #4 with $8.7M. Typical of a low-budget horror movie, fledgling studio A24 has already partnered with DirecTV for VOD distribution, a deal worth $1M.
Female-skewing romantic comedy ‘How To Be Single’ came in at #5 in its second week with $8.2M.
- Deadpool (20th Century Fox) $55M
- Kung Fu Panda (DWA/Fox) $12.5M
- Risen (Sony) $11.8M
- The Witch (A24) $8.7M
- How To Be Single (Warner Brothers/MGM/New Line) $8.2M
Unfortunately, these results meant that Jesse Owens biopic ‘Race’, despite strong Cinemascore rankings (better than those of ‘Risen’ and ‘The Witch’, actually), got shut out of the top five. Despite positive reaction, this may have been the wrong time to put it out. If it would have been released last year or even held until the end of this year, it would have more likely gained awards season buzz, but with this lackluster opening, it is likely to be forgotten by this fall. (Or hell, even in a few weeks.)
This does NOT bode well for next week’s ‘Eddie The Eagle’, another inspirational Olympic-based biopic, but one that looks a bit more light-hearted so that may help it out.
The controversial ‘Gods of Egypt’ is also due out. The movie has been plagued by criticism because of the casting of mostly white actors as Egyptian gods. Ironically, it’s the one black actor, Chadwick Boseman, who will be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Black Panther, that may prove to be the movie’s main draw as some fans may be curious to see how he fares in another big budget action movie before ‘Captain America: Civil War’ later this spring.
Will ‘Deadpool’ threepeat? It very well could, even with that R-rating, especially since the buzz on it is so strong and fans may double dip.
Check back for those numbers!
Sources: Yahoo Movies, Deadline, MoviePilot
