box office

Deadpool Slaughters Superhero Tropes, Box-Office Records, and Hearts on Valentine’s Day Weekend

Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) pauses from a life-and-death battle to break the fourth wall, much to the dismay of his comrades Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic).
Photo: Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox/Marvel /Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

For Valentine’s Day weekend, couples celebrated their undying love by watching Ryan Reynolds kill people. We previously told you Deadpool would make a lot of money, and now we’re confirming that it did, in fact, make a lot of money. The Über-hyped R-rated superhero satire starring Reynolds (in a role he previously played, in bastardized form, in the abysmal X-Men Origins: Wolverine) made a killing at the box office, bleeding moviegoers for over $135 million in three days. Deadpool is expected to make $140–150 million during the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend. Box-office pundits are bewildered by the success of a film for which fans have been clamoring since the aforementioned Origins, and which Reynolds has wanted to make for years. Some of the records the film felled include best February opening, best R-rated opening, and best winter opening. It’s also slated to break the four-day Presidents’ Day Weekend record that 50 Shades of Grey held for a whole year, which is longer than Jurassic World held on to any of its records before The Force Awakens beat them all just six months later.

In non-Deadpool news, Kung Fu Panda 3 made $19.6 million, bringing its domestic cume up to $93.9 million in its third week. How to Be Single, which ostensibly appeals to single people (or ironic couples) who feel lonely on Valentine’s Day, came in third with $18.7 million. Zoolander 2 made a sexy $15.6 million despite hideous reviews, and The Revenant keeps crawling through the barren tundra with $6.9 million in its eighth week in theaters.

Deadpool Slaughters Superhero Tropes, Records