A couple of months back, the Deadpool 2 ship was looking a bit wobbly. There were reports that test audiences weren’t enjoying the movie, and the simple fact that a successful comedy sequel is a relatively rare beast had people worried. But with rave critical reviews and positive audience reactions, it’s looking as if the Merc with a Mouth is onto another winner, which is already translating into broken box office records.
What might be the first of many comes courtesy of the enormous turnout for the film’s Thursday preview screenings. According to Deadline, it made $15 million (a number that could still rise) on the day before its initial release, which beats previous record holder IT, which managed $13.5 million. Deadpool 2‘s predecessor, meanwhile, raked in a healthy $12.7 million on Thursday previews, which turned out to be the harbinger of some truly impressive R-rated moneymaking.
Based on these figures, it’s looking like Deadpool 2 has a good shot at breaking the box office record for an R-rated movie’s opening weekend. IT currently holds that crown with a $123 million haul, with Fox predicting that their superhero sequel will hit $130 million. Some are even saying that prediction might be a bit conservative and with a little luck, the film could reach as high as $150 million – thus comprehensively busting the existing record wide open.
Whether it achieves this or not, it seems pretty clear that Deadpool 2 is set to be a box office smash in the same vein as the original (though I don’t think it’ll beat IT‘s monstrous $700 million record). All this bodes well for the future of this particular strand of Fox’s X-Universe, too, and you can bet that they’ll be eager to get X-Force into production as soon as possible with a healthy budget.
