Gods of Egypt proved to be just a bunch of false gods—and certainly for their would-be devotees at Lionsgate. Not a single box office receipt was turned into a money-making snake, as far as I know, and the only things that ran red were the studio’s ledgers.
Oh, and Deadpool, of course. That guy loves red.
For the third straight week, the bloody, scarlet-clad superhero claimed the box office crown for his very own. The superhero movie banked an estimated $31.5 million, bringing its three-week domestic total to a remarkable $285.6 million. That’s already the third highest gross for an R-rated movie ever, trailing only The Passion of the Christ ($370.3 million) and American Sniper ($350.1 million). Oh, and keep in mind the flick was made for less than $60 million—a pittance in today’s Hollywood and near impossible when to comes to superhero movies. Deadpool’s creators are probably diving into pools of profit these days, Scrooge McDuck style.
Incidentally, Deadpool has already earned more in three weeks than the total gross of any one of 2015’s Academy Awards Best Picture nominees—representatives of which optimistically filed into Hollywood’s Dolby Theater last night for the Oscars. Even though it was a relatively populist roster of hopefuls (the eight Best Picture nominees earned an average of $97.8 million, according to Box Office Mojo), only three of those films crested the $100 million threshold: The Martian, which walked into the awards with seven nominations and walked away with nothing, at least lugged around the biggest gross of any Best Picture nominee—$228.3 million. The Revenant, winner of three Oscars including Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), has banked $170.5 million and counting during its run so far. Mad Max: Fury Road, which took home a whopping six statuettes in its souped-up post-apocalyptic vehicle, earned $153.6 million. And Best Picture winner Spotlight? Just $39.2 million.
In fact, just one of last night’s Oscar winners can boast as big a windfall as Deadpool: That’d be Pixar’s Inside Out, winner of Best Animated Feature and collector of $356.5 million simoleons. I’m sure that fills Disney with oodles of joy.
In contrast to this year’s cash colossus Deadpool, Gods of Egypt looks downright impoverished. Made for an estimated $140 million, the fantasy romp scrounged just $14 million—and let’s face it, if a seven-year famine hits Lionsgate, that won’t fill the barns with food. In fact, I’m not sure if that cash would be enough to (in the movie’s own uncertain theology) pay its own way into the afterlife.
Kung Fu Panda 3 continues to thwack and parry in the Top Five. Its $9 million take this weekend was enough to land the family-friendly flick in third place, just ahead of the $7 million earned by the Christian movie Risen.
Meanwhile, two newcomers are duking it out for fifth place. Eddie the Eagle, the inspiring story of arguably the worst ski jumper in Olympic history, earned $6.3 million—about $200,000 ahead of Triple 9′s $6.1 mil. But these are early estimates, remember, so stay tuned.
Final figures update: 1. Deadpool, $31.1 million; 2. Gods of Egypt, $14.1 million; 3. Kung Fu Panda 3, $8.9 million; 4. Risen, $6.8 million; 5. Triple 9, $6.1 million; 6. Eddie the Eagle, $6.1 million.
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