This side of The Punisher, Marvel’s Deadpool is about as antihero as superheroes get. He swears. He sleeps around. He certainly doesn’t adhere to any sort of Batman-based “no-kill” ethos. So is it a wee bit apropos that the guy made such a killing at the box office?
Deadpool may dress in red, but his movie’s already in the black—blasting to an estimated record-breaking $135.1 million weekend. Add in the receipts from today’s President’s Day holiday, and Fox executives believe Deadpool might bank $150 million during its first four days on the job.
Those are big numbers no matter what time of the year we’re talking about, but it’s especially eye-popping for February. The month’s previous top weekend debut belonged to last year’s Fifty Shades of Grey, and that flick earned a comparatively paltry $85.1 million. Deadpool now stands as the biggest-opening R-rated movie ever, and it’s 20th Century Fox’s highest opener ever (sprinting by none other than Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith).
With that kind of moola in play, two-time box-office champ Kung Fu Panda 3 never really had a chance for a threepeat. Oh, it did just fine for itself, earning $19.7 million. But since Panda 3 has earned less in its entire history ($93.9 million) than Deadpool did in three days, it was pretty much guaranteed to finish no better than second.
Panda 3 did stave off challenges from a pair of newcomers. How to Be Single, the raunchy R-rated comedy starring Fifty Shades‘ Dakota Johnson and Pitch Perfect’s Rebel Wilson, showed the world how to earn $18.8 million, finishing third. Zoolander No. 2 came in fourth, which opened up a good-news/bad-news scenario for its makers: On the upside, Zoolander 2 banked around $15.7 million—about $200,000 more than the original Zoolander made during its opening weekend. On the downside, the original Zoolander opened way back in 2001, when you could buy a steak dinner for a quarter. (Or so I’m told.)
The Revenant (which dominated the BAFTA Awards over the weekend) closed out the Top Five with $6.9 million. It finished just a bear’s hair ahead of Hail, Caesar! ($6.6 million) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($6.2 million)—the latter of which finally slipped out of the Top Five after an eight-week run.
Final figures update: 1. Deadpool, $132.4 million; 2. Kung Fu Panda 3, $19.8 million; 3. How to be Single, $17.9 million; 4. Zoolander No. 2, $13.8 million; 5. The Revenant, $6.5 million.
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