In 2023, the box office world felt a bit upside-down. After more than a decade of big screen dominance, Marvel Studios had a softer year than expected, with both Peyton Reed's Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Nia DaCosta's The Marvels underperforming, and 2024 has felt like a continuation of that mode, with the Hollywood labor battles causing multiple MCU projects to push their release dates to 2025.
For the past week, however, Shawn Levy's Deadpool & Wolverine has brought some normalcy back to the marketplace, however, as it continues to be a box office juggernaut.
As expected, the R-rated superhero movie dominated in theaters again over the last three days, and it once again sits in the number one spot of the Top 10 despite competition from two new wide releases: M. Night Shyamalan's Trap and Carlos Saldanha's Harold And The Purple Crayon. Check out the full chart below and join me after for analysis.
| TITLE | WEEKEND GROSS | DOMESTIC GROSS | LW | THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Deadpool & Wolverine | $97,000,000 | $395,575,919 | 1 | 4,230 |
| 2. Twisters | $22,650,000 | $195,586,000 | 2 | 4,009 |
| 3. Trap* | $15,600,000 | $15,600,000 | N/A | 3,181 |
| 4. Despicable Me 4 | $11,250,000 | $313,970,000 | 3 | 3,376 |
| 5. Inside Out 2 | $6,700,000 | $626,862,246 | 4 | 2,615 |
| 6. Harold And The Purple Crayon* | $6,000,000 | $6,000,000 | N/A | 3,325 |
| 7. Longlegs | $4,140,000 | $66,940,812 | 5 | 2,150 |
| 8. The Firing Squad* | $1,600,000 | $1,600,000 | N/A | 702 |
| 9. A Quiet Place: Day One | $1,400,000 | $137,401,000 | 6 | 1,039 |
| 10. Bad Boys: Ride Or Die | $600,000 | $192,917,000 | 7 | 437 |
Deadpool & Wolverine Crosses $800 Million Worldwide Following A Solid Second Weekend
It should be noted up front that Deadpool & Wolverine didn't have the best second weekend that it could possibly have. Ticket sales fell 54 percent compared to its first Friday-to-Sunday, which can be described as "good, not great," and it notably failed to do what Kelsey Mann's Inside Out 2 did back in June: put up a nine-figure sophomore weekend.
All that being said, the new Marvel blockbuster continues to be a huge hit on the big screen and is well on its way to being the second billion dollar success story of 2024.
According to The Numbers, the latest MCU adventure followed up its $211.4 million opening weekend by adding $97 million to its coffers domestically. To date, it has brought in $395.6 million from the United States and Canada alone, and it has already outgrossed Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage's Despicable Me 4, which had a two-and-a-half-week head start and is still doing well enough to remain in the weekend's Top 5. The only film that has made more at home in 2024 is Inside Out 2 (which has earned $626.9 million so far in its theatrical run and is basically uncatchable at this point).
Obviously what makes Deadpool & Wolverine special in the box office market and amid the two other titles mentioned in that previous paragraph is that it sports a restrictive rating. While the biggest animated hits of the summer have welcomed audiences of all ages, the latest blockbuster from Marvel was made to be adults-only, barring anyone younger than 17 from buying a ticket without a guardian present. Logic dictates that it shouldn't perform as well as the family-friendly features, but that's not what we're seeing unfold.
The picture is looking just as rosy worldwide. In just a little over a week of playing in theaters around the globe, Deadpool & Wolverine has already made $824.1 million, quickly making it the second biggest theatrical release of the year (Despicable Me 4 has made $752.2 million to date, and Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two completed its theatrical run earning $710.5 million).
Before the end of August, it should be in the record books as just the eighth film since theaters reopened in 2021 to earn more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Inside Out 2 was the latest title to join the exclusive club, which also includes James Cameron's Avatar: The Way Of Water, Jon Watt's Spider-Man: No Way Home, Joseph Kosinski's Top Gun: Maverick, Greta Gerwig's Barbie, Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World: Dominion. It will be the first in the group to bring in 10-figures with an R-rating.
It also seems likely that it will ultimately be reflected on as the biggest R-rated hit of all time. That title currently belongs to Todd Phillips' Joker, which made $1.064 billion in 2019, and Deadpool & Wolverine still has to surpass the $977 million that Christopher Nolan's Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer made last year.
M. Night Shyamalan's Trap Has To Settle For Third Place Behind Deadpool & Wolverine And Twisters
As alluded to earlier, there was every expectation that Deadpool & Wolverine was going to repeat at the top of the box office; the big question mark regarding the results from this Sunday were more about where the new releases would land below it in the Top 10. It turns out that neither Trap nor Harold And The Purple Crayon did particularly well, though the former certainly did a hell of a lot better than the latter.
Made with a $30 million budget (according to Deadline), the concert-centric horror film Trap starring Josh Hartnett made $15.6 million in the last few days, which was good enough for it to land in third place behind Deadpool & Wolverine and Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters. That's just about par for the course for M. Night Shyamalan at this point in the filmmaker's career, as 2021's Old made $16.9 million during its opening weekend and 2023's Knock At The Cabin made $14.1 million.
A silver medal finish would have looked much nicer on the books for Trap compared to bronze... but things could be much worse – by which I mean the film could have performed similar to Harold And The Purple Crayon. The new movie starring Zachary Levi based on the book of the same name actually opened in more theaters than Trap (3,325 vs. 3,181), but thriller managed to sell about three times as many tickets. The family-centric release from Sony Pictures landed in sixth place having made $6 million – just $1,805 per location.
Looking ahead to next Friday, Deadpool & Wolverine will very likely be pulling a three-peat at the weekend box office, but it will find some new competition arriving in the form of Eli Roth's videogame adaptation Borderlands, Tilman Singer's horror film Cuckoo, and Justin Baldoni's romantic drama It Ends With Us. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how things shake out with the Top 10, and check out our 2024 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the films heading to theaters in the coming months.
