Over the course of its theatrical release this past month, Deadpool has remained something of a box office heavyweight, and has served to attract attention away from many other worthy competitors over the course of its initial four weeks at the box office. For a total of three weeks straight, it took home the top prize for weekend viewership, and its reign has shows no signs of letting up anytime soon.
Undoubtedly there have plenty of other blockbuster superhero films in the past that have gone above and beyond in their own line of duty, with films like The Avengers and its sequel earning billions for Marvel Studios, with the former title standing as the third-highest grossing film of all time and the first Marvel production to generate $1 billion in ticket sales alone. That being said, its starting to look like the “Merc with a Mouth” might just be capable of holding his own alongside his fellow Marvel brethren.
As reported by Box Office Mojo, director Tim Miller’s new superhero blockbuster franchise brought in another $10.8 million at the domestic box office this past weekend, bringing its total domestic gross up to $328 million. At those numbers, Deadpool has officially surpassed Jon Favreau’s original Iron Man, whose total domestic gross from 2008 topped out at $318.4 million, and is on course to surpass Guardians of the Galaxy which stands at $333.1 million.
It’s unlikely that Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson will be able to surpass the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and company in Joss Whedon’s aforementioned Avengers motion pictures domestically, though Deadpool has reached a grand total of $708 million globally, which is no small feat. And given the fact that a sequel featuring Cable is on the way, the still young franchise might yet become one of the highest selling Marvel associated properties of all time.
Reynolds and Miller delivered a film that pleased both die hard fans of the original comic book character and casual moviegoers with their R-rated spectacle this past month, and have effectively managed to make as much and more money than most studio supported superhero productions. Beating out the likes of Iron Man on a domestic box office scale is certainly not something to dismiss out of hand, and with any luck might just signal the dawning of an entirely new era of more personal passion projects within the superhero movie industry in kind.
X-Men: Apocalypse will open in U.S. theaters on May 27th, 2016, followed by Wolverine 3 on March 3rd, 2017 and unannounced X-Men films on October 6th, 2017 (possibly Gambit), January 12th, 2018 (possibly Deadpool 2), and July 13th, 2018. The New Mutants is also in development.
Source: Box Office Mojo
