Everyone at Twentieth Century Fox will probably show up at work on Tuesday following the President’s Day holiday and find a chimichanga valentine on their desk. Or at least they should considering Deadpool defied practical logic and tore up numerous box office records en-route to a massive four-day holiday opening weekend haul.
With Ryan Reynolds as its star, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick delivering the vulgarity, Tim Miller calling the shots, and Fox’s marketing department working their dream project where anything and everything was apparently fair game, Deadpool blew away the President’s Day three-day box office record with a cool $135 million from Friday through Sunday. Tack on Monday’s estimates and you’re looking at a cool $150 million for the $58 million-budgeted Deadpool through roughly 100 hours of release.
Who said Valentine’s Day was all about sappy chick flicks?
Warner’s The Matrix Reloaded previously held the R-rated opening weekend record at $91.7 million and that film came out in May. Deadpool laughed at that number and beat it by a cool 68 percent. Sorry, Neo.
Deadpool essentially took out every February and R-rated record in the books including numerous set by Fifty Shades of Grey a year ago. Perhaps a more impressive record for Deadpool is the largest opening ever at Twentieth Century Fox, topping the $108.4 million opening of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith back in 2005. Obviously Deadpool 2 is already in the works.
Read our Deadpool movie review.
Holdover and previous two-time weekend box office champ Kung Fu Panda 3 kicked and clawed its way into second place with $19.7 million through Sunday. If estimates hold then Kung Fu Panda 3 should cross $100 million in box office business by the end of Monday.
The R-rated comedy How to Be Single landed in third place with $18.8 million through Sunday. Zoolander 2, the other weekend newcomer, took fourth place with $15.7 million.
Rounding out the Top 5 is Best Picture frontrunner The Revenant with $6.9 million. It should cross the $160 million domestic gross mark either Monday or Tuesday.
