Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds star in Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Disney
The trio Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and Shawn Levy captured lightning in a bottle with “Deadpool & Wolverine”.
Since Thursday, the Disney and the Marvel film is the highest-grossing R-rated title of all time, surpassing 'Warner Bros.' “Joker.”
With $516.8 million in domestic ticket sales and $568.8 million in international attendance, Deadpool & Wolverine has surpassed $1.085 billion worldwide. Notably, a sequel to Joker will be released in October of this year.
Not only does this performance underscore the Marvel Cinematic Universe's resilience at the box office after a string of recent failures, but it also suggests that Marvel Studios can move on to darker content in the future without alienating moviegoers.
“The success of their first R-rated film opens up a lot of opportunities for Disney and Marvel,” said Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of Box Office Theory. “It's important to remember that the rating was organic and necessary for the characters, which is what helped audiences and fans respond so positively. They knew from the start that this wasn't going to be a watered-down version of a formula that had already worked.”
The previous Deadpool films were produced by 20th Century Fox and were also rated R. When the big-mouthed mercenary became Disney's property in 2019, it was unclear whether the company would embrace his fourth-wall-breaking crassness or put him on hold while it produced other Marvel projects.
When Marvel boss Kevin Feige announced in 2021 that a third Deadpool film would keep its R rating, there was a collective sigh of relief among the MCU fanbase. Additionally, Marvel gave Reynolds and Levy leeway to poke fun at the company's executives and the franchise as a whole, even using the iconic “Frozen” line, “Wanna build a snowman?” to make a drug reference.
“Disney will likely be very selective in deciding which future films they can safely air with an adult rating because, just like Marvel, they still have to consider their huge family audience, but this at least provides a blueprint for how and when it's appropriate to do so,” Robbins said.
Deadpool & Wolverine hit theaters in late July, following a string of hits and misses for Disney's best franchise. The studio's last film was The Marvels, which came out in November and had the worst box office and gross of any MCU film ever.
Now there is renewed confidence in the MCU, especially because Marvel has used San Diego Comic-Con and Disney's biennial D23 Expo to tease its upcoming film slate and share exclusive footage.
Going forward, the studio appears to be limiting the number of series it produces for its streaming platform Disney+ and focusing on the big screen. Previously, Marvel had produced nearly a dozen shows for the streaming platform, flooding the market and alienating some fans.
Upcoming movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe
- “Captain America: Brave New World” (2025)
- “Thunderbolts*” (2025)
- “Fantastic Four: First Steps” (2025)
- “Blade” (2025)
- “Avengers: Doomsday” (2026)
- “Avengers: Secret Wars” (2027)
Marvel will release six feature films over the next three years and three television series are planned for 2025: “Agatha All Along,” “Ironheart,” and “Daredevil: Born Again.”
Both Comic Con and D23 audiences cheered the announcements of Marvel's lineup, a sign that interest in the superhero genre has not waned. That's good news for the MCU, which has grossed more than $30 billion at the box office since the release of Iron Man in 2008.
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