The 2024 box office is in the pits, clearly, and Sony just bought the Alamo Drafthouse in a disturbing, do-anything-to-survive sign of the times. But is there hope on the horizon, with Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” already expected to save the 2024 box office?
Well, the early word is massive and good. According to Deadline, The Quorum film tracker, which actually monitors pics six weeks ahead, is reporting a projection of $200M-$239M, which, according to the trade, “the service actually believes is conservative.”
These would be monster figures if correct, and anything over $207 million would be the fourth highest Marvel opening of all time, besting 2012’s “The Avengers” and 2015’s ‘Age Of Ultron.’ Those figures, if correct, would make “Deadpool & Wolverine” the highest R-rated domestic box office opening of all time, surpassing the figure held by the original “Deadpool” in 2016 with $132 million (“Deadpool 2” has the number two spot with $125 million). This could mean “Deadpool & Wolverine” could almost double the domestic opening figures of “Deadpool,” which would be staggering.
Could this mean that Bob Iger’s plan to scale back Marvel releases to two-or-three a year could be quickly reversed and go back to four films a year? Well, not so fast, and there’s reason to be cautious here.
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In normal times, a Marvel movie that opened north of $200 million was a certified $1 billion dollar movie at least, but these are not normal times, and the box office is dour at the moment.
But could this movie resemble 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home”? The box office was calamitous then, too, during the pandemic. Still, audiences made the major exception for the film, and it grossed a staggering $1.9 billion at the global box office, the seven-highest-grossing movie of all time.
There are many different factors at play here that should lead pundits to be cautious. One, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” is R-rated. None of the other highest-grossing films of all time are even the top 30 of all-time grossing movies (in fact, the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time “Joker” with just over $1 billion (the highest grossing “Deadpool” movie of all time is the first one; $785.5M worldwide).
Additionally, this Quorum tracking, while optimistic, is six weeks out. Last time, the Quorum made early, six-week-out tracking on a Marvel movie, they predicted “The Marvels” would open to $90 million, and the film, instead, opened to $47 million— worst-ever opening weekend for an MCU film. Sure, a strike was going on then, but couldn’t the Quorum have factored that into their analysis?
Then there’s China as a significant factor, which is a former shell of itself where the North American box office is concerned. All the primary $1 billion-plus Marvel movies greatly benefited from huge numbers from China (“Avengers: Infinity War” earned $359.5 million in China alone in 2018). However, in 2022 and 2023, when Marvel movies returned to the country after a long absence, they didn’t provide the outstanding numbers needed to hit that mark.
“Captain Marvel” grossed all of $15.2M in China. “Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania” earned $39.4M, and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” earned $15.5 million. Only “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3” made a substantial amount, with $86.9 million in the Eastern nation, but that film couldn’t cross $850 million globally.
So mitigating factors include an R-rating, which prevents it from being a four-quadrant, family-friendly release, you have a dramatic dip in China grosses for North American films, you have a wobbly, uncertain 2024 box office, which is depressed, and you have the Quorum, which might be overestimating things a tad.
Again, on its face and under “normal,” pre-2020 circumstances, the Quorum’s early predictions point to a film that’s undoubtedly hitting $1 billion and maybe even $1.5, given the math we have to work with historically. But these are drastically different times with a much different set of circumstances (not even one “X-Men” movie ever grossed higher than $800 million globally during its peak).
Yes, either way, “Deadpool & Wolverine” already looks like it will be the highest-grossing film of 2024 based on those numbers alone and a huge hit, great. But again, proceed with caution, over-estimation might be about and other factors would dampen those numbers on the overall back-end, time will tell.