Marvel Studios is back.
Director Shawn Levy‘s threequel Deadpool & Wolverine delivered up a massive $96 million on Friday at the domestic box office, the sixth-biggest opening day of all time after edging out the final Harry Potter pic ($91.1 million), not adjusted for inflation.
The Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman superhero pic is assured of scoring the biggest R-rated opening of all time — the first Deadpool is the current crown holder at $133.7 million. The only question now is just high how it will climb. Disney and Marvel are predicting $195 million to $205 million, something no one thought possible for an R-rated pic. That’s well ahead of pre-opening projections of $160 million to $175 million, which were already huge numbers, and would mark the top openings ever for Reynolds — the mastermind behind the Deadpool franchise — Levy and Jackman.
Deadpool & Wolverine is the first R-rated movie released by Disney and puts Kevin Feige’s Disney-owned Marvel back in the driver’s seat after a rough patch. The tentpole boasts a 97 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the second-best score ever for a Marvel film behind Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Friday’s haul includes $38.5 million in previews on Thursday.
The high-profile Deadpool threequel, which returns Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool and brings Jackman into the franchise as Logan/Wolverine, is also doing big business overseas, where its total through Friday was $115.1 million for a very early global cume of $211.1 million.
Deadpool & Wolverine is being buoyed by strong reviews and even stronger audience exits on PostTrack, along with an A CinemaScore and its Rotten Tomatoes score.
Reynolds — also an expert promoter and producer — and his marketing team at Maximum Effort, along with Disney, have been trying to grow the audience by tailoring promotion to women. On Thursday, Taylor Swift — who is good friends with Reynolds and wife Blake Lively — used her powerful social media sway to post an item endorsing the movie that included a link to buy tickets “if you like to see things that are unspeakably awesome.” Continuing, she said, “Shout out to Wade Wilson, a.k.a., my god kids’ sperm donor.”
Friday’s audience skewed male, or 63 percent, in keeping with the normal play pattern for a superhero pic, according to PostTrack, but the gender gap could even out as the weekend progresses.
The first Deadpool made history when opening to $133.7 million domestically in February 2016, proving that a superhero pic could draw big crowds despite the restrictive rating. A little more than two years later, Deadpool 2 debuted to $125.5 million.
Feige’s Marvel took over the Deadpool franchise when Marvel’s parent company Disney swallowed up 20th Century Fox, which had rights to the X-Men universe of characters.
While the Marvel movie is sucking up most of the air at the box office, Twisters seems to be holding its own in its second outing. The Universal film looks to fall 57 percent — the decline could have been far worse — to $36 million for a 10-day domestic total of $155 million.