Deadpool Sets New February Box Office Record

Deadpool-Box-Office

20th Century Fox and Marvel’s Deadpool has won Valentine’s Day weekend on its first day of release, taking an estimated $47.5 million on Friday the R-Rated superhero movie is on course for 3 day opening weekend of $135 million. That’s pretty pretty good.

Ryan Reynolds finally got a second crack at playing the Merc with a Mouth and his third overall attempt to launch a superhero franchise. Thanks to some ‘leaked’ footage directed by Tim Miller, Fox yielded and gave the go ahead to bring the fourth wall breaking character to the big screen. Miller’s movie didn’t have a superhero-sized budget ($58 million) which allowed his team to make a decidedly un-family friendly flick, and that’s just fine with us.

This time last year, 50 Shades of Grey was breaking box office records and was the movie choice of the Valentine’s weekend, but Deadpool’s Friday was 57% above that of 50 Shades. The king -sized opening is good news for 20th Century Fox as their last superhero reboot didn’t do so well. The Fantastic Four was a complete creative disaster and proved to be a costly flop; there’s no word yet on what Fox plan to do with the characters as they refused to give the rights back to Marvel.

Deadpool is an important movie for the future of superhero movies, we have already seen that a harder tone works on the small screen with Daredevil and Jessica Jones, but movie studios won’t gamble big money on R-Rated superhero movies. A low budget means less risk for the studio and more freedom for the filmmakers, a luxury that Joss Whedon would have welcomed during his time as Avengers overlord. I’m not saying that all superhero movies should be filled with sex, swearing, and violence, but if the source material is aimed at a mature market, then the movie should be likeminded.

Ryan Reynolds is a better actor than he is often given credit for, if you’ve seen The Nines then you’ll know first hand that he is capable of complex characters as well as bringing the funny. Sadly, he hasn’t always picked the best scripts with the likes of The Change-Up, The Proposal, Just Friends and The Green Lantern clogging up his CV. A Deadpool sequel is already in the works so we should expect to find out more details in the wake of this huge thumbs up.

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