February 15, 2016 by Paul Curtin
We tweeted at the start of the weekend telling people to go see Deadpool figuring it could use all the help it could get after the last ultra-violent R-rated comic book adaptation, Dredd, failed to bring in its key adult audience and be a success at the box office. But it turns out, Deadpool didn’t need any of our help because of its superb marketing campaign that helped Ryan Reynold’s retrun as the Merc with the Mouth be the talk of the town on Valentine’s Day.
Along with being one of the best comic adaptations ever and having one of the best movie stingers ever, the fourth-wall-breaking anti-hero absolutely killed the weekend box office pulling in $150 million and breaking multiple records nobody predicted it ever could. The biggest of said records were #1 February opening weekend and #1 R-rated film opening of all time. With the film being rated R and the biggest opening weekend ever for Fox, hopefully the pool boy’s success will put pressure on more studios to ease off the need to make everything PG-13 and possibly even give more chance of a sequel to 2012’s overlooked masterpiece, Dredd, in addition to the inevitable sequel to Deadpool.
Deadpool wasn’t the only character returning to the silver screen’s spotlight over the weekend and Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson also tried to make their own comeback in Zoolander 2. Unfortunately, the merc was too much for the models or Single ladies to handle (feel free to use that one, Wade) with both Zoolander 2 ($16 mil) and How to be Single ($20.6 mil) finishing in a distant 3rd and 4th place.
Here are the numbers for the top five of the domestic box office over the weekend via BOM:
- Deadpool — Total Gross: $150 million (new)
- Kung Fu Panda 3 — Weekend Gross: $26 million — Total Gross: $100.2 million (#1 last week)
- How to be Single — Total Gross: $20.6 million (new)
- Zoolander 2 — Weekend Gross: $16 (new)
- The Revenant — Weekend Gross: $7.8 million — Total Gross: $160 million (#4 last week)
