After three weekends ruling the box office in a big way, Avengers: Infinity War will relinquish the top spot to another Marvel title. Deadpool 2 will easily take the top spot and now it’s just a matter of how big the film will actually be.
Originally Deadpool 2 owned the lucrative post-Memorial Day June weekend frame that Wonder Woman launched in a year ago, but FOX decided to make its money sooner by switching its Marvel title to this weekend. The move wasn’t a bad one as it allowed Infinity War to have the box office to itself for the last three weekends, which ensures a big opening for Deadpool 2 since fans will be eager for a new tentpole release to focus on. The only downside to the move is that it opens just a week before Solo: A Star Wars Story so it will only spend one week as the box office champ. Despite giving up the top spot next week, it should still have a strong Memorial Day weekend showing.
The original Deadpool opened during the Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day four-day holiday two years ago becoming the top R-rated domestic opener of all-time with $132.4 million over 3-days & $152.1 million over 4 days. Anything north of the former would set a new record. Overseas the 2016 film had a slightly different release pattern, but in today’s dollars and like-for-like markets, it did $149.9 million (that was also at a time when there was minimal competition during the February school holidays in Europe, Asia as well as a boost from the Chinese New Year). Ultimately, Deadpool finished at an unadjusted $420 million overseas and became the highest-grossing R-rated film both internationally and worldwide ($783.1 million).
The sequel currently has an 87% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing and that’s an even higher score than that of the original (82% fresh) which could bode well for potential word of mouth. I’m predicting an opening on the high end of tracking with about $155-160 million.
Coming in strong with a bit of female-centric counterprogramming is Book Club, which should play well to those who aren’t into the violent quips of the “Merc with a mouth.” The film stars Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen and is about a group of ladies whose lives are changed after reading 50 Shades of Grey in their book club.
The film has been promoting itself heavily on female-skewing programs and the ladies have been on a big publicity blitz. Tracking had this coming in at $8-10 million but that was before the reviews came out. As of this writing, the film is 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of the reviews are praising the chemistry of the four leads. The film opens with 5 PM previews tonight and I’m guessing we’ll have a bigger picture of how well it will do once those numbers are released but I never underestimate the female audience, especially when it’s a film that truly speaks to them. I’m predicting about $20 million for the weekend with a potential for solid word of mouth since it mostly has the market to itself until Ocean’s 8 opens on June 8.
