‘Deadpool 2’ Gives Maximum Effort But Fails To Break Records With $125 Million Opening

When “Deadpool” opened in February 2016, the film shattered expectations and became a phenomenon unlike any “X-Men” film before it. The hard-R superhero film set records and made the Merc with a Mouth a household name. So, when the sequel hit theaters this weekend, many were wondering if the film could capture the same magic of the first one, or if the joke was already a bit played out.

Well, according to the box office receipts, the news is perhaps a bit bittersweet for the Fox superhero flick. “Deadpool 2” had an impressive opening weekend, but is going to fall a bit short of record-breaking. With an estimated $125 million*, “Deadpool 2” is going to fall short of the first film’s opening frame ($132.4 million) and come in with the second-highest R-rated opening weekend of all time, after setting a new R-rated Thursday previews record of $18.6 million. While the $125 million is far below some tracking that showed the raunchy superhero comedy could hit as high as $150 million, Fox can’t complain too much, especially with a global hall just north of $300 million.

The studio placed “Deadpool 2” smack dab in between two Disney powerhouse franchises – the Marvel Cinematic Universe and “Star Wars.” Many were concerned that another superhero film released on the heels of the massive film “Avengers: Infinity War” might hurt “Deadpool 2’s” chance at beating its own R-rated records. We’ll never know for sure if “Deadpool 2” could have done better by itself on a different weekend, but again, the film did pretty well in spite of ‘Infinity War.’

READ MORE: ‘Deadpool 2’: A Filthier, Funnier, Maximum Overkill Sequel That Works

The other concern is the long-term effect of the release date. Next week, Disney releases “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which, despite not being a superhero film, has much of the same audience. Let’s be real – the Venn diagram of “Star Wars” and Marvel fans is almost completely overlapping. This means that there’s a strong chance that even though “Deadpool 2” had a pretty great opening weekend, it could fall way short of the first film’s final domestic and worldwide totals.

Speaking of competition, “Deadpool 2” holds the distinction of knocking ‘Infinity War’ off the top spot. The ‘Avengers’ epic came in at #2 with an estimated $29 million in its fourth weekend. That puts the film at a domestic total of $595 million. For weeks, we’ve been anticipating the release of “Deadpool 2” and ‘Solo’ to see how the ‘Avengers’ flick would fare against heavy competition. Sure, $29 million isn’t a bad fourth weekend (it actually ranks as the #6 fourth weekend all-time), but the weekend-to-weekend drops are showing that ‘Infinity War’ is definitely going to be more front-loaded than some other MCU titles, especially “Black Panther.” For comparison’s sake, in its fourth weekend, “Black Panther” pulled in $40.8 million.

READ MORE: ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Second-Fastest To $500 Million And Moves Into Top 10 All-Time

It appears that the final domestic tally for “Avengers: Infinity War” will place it at #4 all-time, but it will definitely fall short of “Black Panther’s” #3 spot. Worldwide, the film is already #4 and should stay there, just falling short of the $2 billion mark.

With the superhero talk all done, it’s time we move on to the other films that opened wide this weekend. In the truest sense of counter-programming, the only other big releases this week were “Book Club” and “Show Dogs.” We’ll talk about the creepy Will Arnett/Talking dogs film in a second, but coming in at #3 was the film about a bunch of middle-aged women reading “50 Shades of Grey.” “Book Club” had an opening weekend of $12.3 million, beating industry tracking that placed the film in the high single-digits. It appears that Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Mary Steenburgen still have enough in the tank to carry a rom-com.

As we just mentioned, Will Arnett had a new family-friendly comedy film in theaters this weekend with “Show Dogs.” You may have noticed that “Show Dogs” news has been pretty non-existent on The Playlist leading up to the release, and for good reason. The trailers looked horrible, and the premise is downright laughable. And apparently, audiences agreed. The film follows an FBI agent who teams up with a talking police dog to infiltrate the sinister world of dog shows. Audiences didn’t really connect with the film, and it opened with $6 million at #6.

Now let’s wash that foul taste out of our mouths with some films that we actually do care about. “RBG,” which is having a great early run at theaters pulled in another $1.28 million this weekend in only a few hundred theaters to barely make it into the top 10 for the second weekend in a row. Playing on far fewer screens is Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed,” which did an impressive $100k on only 4 screens this weekend. However, beating that film is the new 70mm re-release of Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which pulled in approximately $187k on 4 screens. Not too shabby for a film that’s celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Next week, we move from the Marvel Universe to the galaxy far, far away, with the opening weekend of “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” Even though the film seems to have decent early reviews, there’s a lot of questions surrounding the newest ‘Star Wars’ film. Are we looking at the first Lucasfilm disappointment since the company relaunched the series in 2015?

(*These numbers are based on early estimates and we will update later with final numbers.)

Here’s the rest of the top 10 for May 18 – May 20:

1. Deadpool 2 — $125M (Debut)
2. Avengers: Infinity War — $29M ($595M Overall)
3. Book Club — $12.3M (Debut)
4. Life of the Party — $7.5M ($30.9M)
5. Breaking In — $6.5M ($28.8M)
6. Show Dogs — $6M (Debut)
7. Overboard — $4.6M ($36.9M)
8. A Quiet Place — $3.8M ($176M)
9. Rampage — $1.37M ($92M)
10. RBG — $1.28M ($3.8M)