Two very different films are giving the August box office a rush of new energy, as Sony/Wayfarer’s “It Ends With Us” has earned a superb $50 million opening weekend while Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine” stays No. 1 with $54 million to become the second R-rated film to gross $1 billion worldwide.
“It Ends With Us,” which carries a $25 million budget before marketing, has become the latest of a long line of mid-budget films targeted at women that is finding box office success.
Based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel and starring Blake Lively and director Justin Baldoni, the film has won over the author’s fans with a 94% Rotten Tomatoes audience score, an A- CinemaScore and a 4 ½ star PostTrak rating.
Just as important, Sony reports that nearly half of the film’s audience are infrequent moviegoers, meaning that theaters are getting revenue from untapped areas of the public while “It Ends With Us” can see its word-of-mouth reach farther. With next week’s big release being the franchise horror film “Alien: Romulus,” “It Ends With Us” will have a lane all to itself in the final weeks of the summer season.
“Deadpool & Wolverine,” starring Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds, is crossing the $1 billion mark worldwide in its third weekend in theaters, grossing $54 million domestically to bring its North American total to $494 million. In the coming week, it will pass “Joker” to become the highest grossing R-rated film of all time, currently standing with $1.02 billion worldwide.
Combined, “Deadpool 3” and “It Ends With Us” are pushing overall grosses for the weekend to an industry estimated $158 million, 35% above the same weekend last year and 19% ahead of the same weekend in 2019. While the summer season started with the worst May since the turn of the century, the marketplace has been white hot since the release of “Inside Out 2” and is now headed for a strong finish.
But the weekend is not without its bad spots, namely Lionsgate’s “Borderlands,” which is shaping up to be a critical and commercial flop with an opening weekend of just $8.8 million.
Lionsgate has recouped much of the film’s $110 million budget from foreign presales, and the studio will need that as critics and audiences alike have panned Eli Roth’s adaptation of the hit video game series with a 10% Rotten Tomatoes score and a D+ on CinemaScore.
Among holdovers, Universal’s “Twisters” added $15 million in its fourth weekend, standing third on the charts as its domestic total reaches $222 million. Universal’s other big summer film, Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4,” now stands at $330 million domestic and $807 million worldwide.
Outside the top 5, Warner Bros. and M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap” dropped 58% from its $15 million opening weekend to earn $6.5 million and bring its domestic total to $28.4 million. Finally, Neon’s latest horror film “Cuckoo” earned $3 million on its opening weekend from 1,502 theaters.
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