“Deadpool & Wolverine” Achieves Massive $97 Million in Second Weekend

Image Credit: Entertainment Weekly

With its remarkable performance at the box office, the highly anticipated film “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which stars Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds, has once again caught the attention of the media. Early this month, the movie opened theatres and made a whopping $97 million on its second weekend of showing. Considering that this strong performance marks a 53% down from its huge $211 million opening weekend, it is remarkable. With the eighth-largest second-weekend revenue in domestic box office receipts, “Deadpool & Wolverine” boasts tremendous second-weekend earnings.

Only a few previous blockbusters have had better second-weekend sales in comparison. Among them are heavyweights including “Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($149 million), “Avengers: Endgame ($147 million), and “Infinity War ($ 114 million). Other noteworthy entries in this restricted club are “Black Panther ($111 million), “Jurassic World ($106 million),” “The Avengers ($103 million),” and this June’s “Inside Out 2 ($101 million).” The popularity of “Deadpool & Wolverine” exceeds that of “Barbie, which brought in $93 million on its second weekend.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” has earned shockingly $824 million worldwide and $395 million in North America to thus far. This exceeds the $783 million and $786 million grossing first two “Deadpool” flicks respectively. With the momentum of the picture, it is projected to cross the $1 billion mark soon, therefore securing its ranking as the second-highest grossing movie of 2024, after only “Inside Out 2, which has earned $1.555 billion globally.

Though “Deadpool & Wolverine” is still quite popular, the box office showed a mixed reaction to new releases. With $15 million from 3,181 cinemas, M. Night Shyamalan’s newest thriller, “Trap,” starring Josh Hartnett, ranked third. For Shyamalan, whose recent films also had slow debuts, this performance represents a meager beginning. For example, “Knock at the Cabin” started with $14.1 million and “Old” with $16.8 million respectively. But whereas “Knock at the Cabin” ended with $35 million locally and $54 million globally, “Old” finally managed to reach a domestic total of $48 million and a global tally of $90 million.

With Warner Bros. handling distribution and Shyamalan self-financing his films, the roughly $30 million movie will need to perform well beyond its initial sales to justify its investment. To reach profitability, David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research pointed out that “Trap” would need improved foreign performance and robust auxiliary business.

With just $6 million from 3,325 screens, Sony’s “Harold and the Purple Crayon” had a dismal opening in the family film market and came in sixth place. Though based on a popular children’s book, the live-action/animated hybrid lagged behind other family-oriented hits like “Despicable Me 4” and “Inside Out 2, both of which are already firmly established at the box office.” With a $40 million production budget, “Harold and the Purple Crayon” will have to greatly increase its revenues if it is to satisfy financial projections.

Positively, Universal’s “Twisters, a disaster epic starring Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos,” landed in third weekend with $22 million. The movie has done rather well, generating around $250 million worldwide and $194 million domestically.

Reaching $1.2 billion in domestic income, July’s box office had a significant rise—the first billion-dollar month since last year’s “Barbenheimer” phenomena. Blockbusters including “Inside Out 2, “Twisters, “Despicable Me 4,” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” gave outstanding performance that helped to reach this benchmark. Comscore reports, however, that the North American box office still lags 16.5% below the numbers from the year before, notwithstanding this triumph.

Senior analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore said on the performance of the month, “July was a knockout, delivering big and pushing the month over the $1 billion mark domestically.” He said, however, that the next weeks might not be as robust and that the popular movies of July will have to keep doing well to keep momentum as the summer season ends.

With its outstanding second weekend results highlighting its general appeal, “Deadpool & Wolverine” has confirmed its place as a big box office blockbuster. Although fresh films like “Trap” and “Harold and the Purple Crayon” battled to have a big effect, the general box office scene is still colorful since big triumphs provide hope for next projects.

This story was originally featured on Variety