Disney/Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine” has achieved its destiny, joining “Joker” as the second R-rated film to gross $1 billion at the global box office.
The film needed three weekends to reach that milestone, grossing a strong $54 million domestically this weekend to bring its total to $494 million in North America and an estimated $535 million overseas. With $1.02 billion grossed, Disney is the first studio ever to have back-to-back releases reach $1 billion, as Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” crossed that mark last month and will pass $1.6 billion in the coming week.
At this pace, exhibitor sources estimate that “Deadpool & Wolverine” is currently on pace to clear at least $1.4 billion in global grosses. That would be enough to clear the unadjusted theatrical runs of megahits like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Black Panther,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and even “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
It is also set to pass “Joker” and its $1.07 billion global total to become the highest grossing R-rated film ever in the coming week.
“Deadpool & Wolverine” continues what has been a resurgent summer for Disney after a rough nine months at the box office with films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” falling short of their inflated budgets while others like “The Marvels” and “Wish” failed to make much of an impact at the box office at a time when theaters needed more tentpoles that delivered.
But after “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” became a modest success for Disney and 20th Century Studios in May, Pixar brought in a box office drought buster with “Inside Out 2,” which is now one of the top 10 highest grossing films of all time before inflation adjustment with $1.55 billion grossed.
Now “Deadpool & Wolverine” has hit heights never before seen by an R-rated film, fueled by Ryan Reynolds’ years-long campaign to harness the irreverent fourth-wall breaking humor of Deadpool and make it into a pop culture touchstone with his own brand of charisma.
That formula, which has given the “Deadpool” trilogy the three highest opening weekends ever seen in the R rating, was combined with the reliable power of nostalgia. Similar to how the return of Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and other actors from past “Spider-Man” films turned “Spider-Man: No Way Home” into the first billion-plus hit of the 2020s, the return of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, along with a slew of surprise cameos from Marvel films acquired by Disney in the 2019 20th Century Fox merger made “Deadpool & Wolverine” into a can’t-miss film for hardcore and casual fans alike.
Now the question is whether Marvel Studios can use this success to reignite the goodwill that made it into the undisputed champion of Hollywood in the 2010s and which was lost in recent years with a series of inconsistently received films following the acclaimed “Avengers: Endgame.”
The studio has also been forced to abandon a significant portion of its developing cross-film arcs after firing Jonathan Majors, who was set to play the multiversal villain Kang in the upcoming “Avengers” films, after he was found guilty of reckless assault and harassment last December.
Marvel revealed at San Diego Comic-Con what alternate direction the MCU would take, as the upcoming “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty” was renamed to “Avengers: Doomsday,” with MCU forefather and newly-minted Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. returning to the fold to play the evil Doctor Victor von Doom. The upcoming films “The Fantastic 4: First Steps” and “Thunderbolts*,” both set to hit theaters next year, will serve as lead-ins to “Doomsday,” which will be released in April 2026.
The studio released its own video touting the fact that it had crossed the billion-dollar mark, which you can watch below:
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