You don’t need us to tell you that the big news coming out of this weekend’s box office numbers was the tremendous disappointment that was Solo: A Star Wars Story. Pulling in a pathetic $83.3 million, it’s the franchise’s first real flop and frankly, it’s surprising just how poorly it performed. No one expected it to be a smash hit, but boy, did it bomb.
But the Ron Howard-directed Anthology pic was far from the only thing in theaters, of course. Wade Wilson is still around and giving audiences a good time and thanks to a strong second weekend, Deadpool 2 managed to bring in $42.7 million. That’s a 66% drop from last week, when it debuted with $125.5 million.
This on par with blockbusters like Godzilla (66% drop) and Alien: Covenant (70% drop), so it’s not too bad. Not to mention that the sequel only cost $110 million to make, and with a global haul of nearly $500 million already in the bank, Fox has more than turned a profit on the project.
Deadpool 2 is also now within reaching distance of two important milestones. For one, it’s starting to creep up on The Hangover Part II‘s worldwide gross of $587 million, which is the current record for highest grossing comedy sequel of all-time. And then there’s also Meet the Fockers‘ $279 million domestic take, the record for biggest comedy sequel in North America. Whether DP’s latest big screen outing is able to hit either of those marks remains to be seen, but there’s no denying that it’s been a huge success already.
The future looks extremely bright for the Merc with a Mouth as well. True, Deadpool 3 may not be a sure thing at the moment, but Wade Wilson will be back for that X-Force spinoff we keep hearing so much about. And beyond that? Well, we can’t say for sure, but with these kind of numbers, expect to see a lot more of the anti-hero in the years to come.