Marvel Studios‘ box office troubles will seemingly be short-lived, with Deadpool & Wolverine currently tracking for a $200 million-plus opening weekend.
How much money could Deadpool & Wolverine earn in its opening weekend at the box office?
According to the box office tracker The Quorum (via Deadline), which monitors movies six weeks ahead of release, the hotly-anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe movie is projected to earn between $200 million and $239 million in its opening weekend.
Deadline notes that The Quorum lists this box office projection as “conservative,” meaning that the tracking system believes the movie could open higher than $239 million. Regardless, a $200M+ opening for Deadpool & Wolverine would be a milestone achievement for an R-rated movie. The current record holder for an R-rated opening at the domestic box office is 2016’s Deadpool, which grossed $132.4 million.
Even if Deadpool & Wolverine comes in slightly below expectations, a $150M-$200M opening would still be a major win for Marvel Studios, which is coming off of a less-than-stellar 2023. While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was an outlier, earning more than $845 million worldwide, Marvel’s other two 2023 movies — Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels — both underperformed at the box office. The Marvels, in particular, was a major flop for the brand, becoming the lowest-grossing MCU movie ever at the box office with $206 million.
Directed by Shawn Levy, Deadpool & Wolverine finds Ryan Reynolds‘ Merc with a Mouth pulled from his quiet life by the Time Variance Authority and sent on a mission with Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine to save the MCU. The superhero movie marks the first time since X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009 that Reynolds and Jackman’s title characters have shared the screen.
Besides Reynolds and Jackman, Deadpool & Wolverine stars Morena Baccarin, Brianna Hildebrand, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Stefan Kapičić, Shioli Kutsuna, Lewis Tan, and Rob Delaney, who are all returning from the previous Deadpool movies. The cast also includes X-Men original trilogy cast member Aaron Stanford and Daredevil and Elektra star Jennifer Garner.
New additions to the franchise include Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova and Matthew Macfadyen as Paradox. The film was written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells from a previous draft by Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin.
Deadpool & Wolverine opens in theaters on July 26, 2024, as part of Phase 5 of the MCU.
