Why Didn't 'Deadpool 2' Make More Noise at the Box Office?
Some Christians were offended by the ads touting superhero sequel Deadpool 2 as "the Second Coming." They needn't have wasted their outrage. Despite such a lofty proclamation, the film didn't quite live up to its hype at the box office.
Yes, the eagerly awaited sequel, which opened on 4,349 screens, was the widest ever release for both 20th Century Fox and for all R-rated movies ever. And yes, it did easily debut atop the box office with an estimated $125.0 million, dethroning the fellow Marvel Comics heroes who'd made Avengers: Infinity War the top movie for the three previous weeks. Nonetheless, Deadpool 2 was supposed to be the most lucrative R-rated premiere of all time, yet it didn't even gross as much as the first Deadpool two years ago.
That film debuted on just 3,558 screens, but it scored $132.4 million in its first three days. Deadpool boasted a per-screen average of $37,222, 30 percent higher than Deadpool 2's $28, 742.
Given the size o the 2016 movie's opening, experts were predicting a Deadpool 2 debut anywhere from $130 to $150 million. And indeed, after robust pre-sales at Fandango, strong buzz from both critics (83 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes) and first-night viewers (who gave it an A grade at CinemaScore), and a $50 million opening day on Friday, the sword-wielding smartass superhero seemed on track to reach the predicted range. But on Saturday, the movie took in only about $40 million, leading to 20th Century Fox's low estimate on Sunday for the weekend's total.
Why the slowdown? Here are some possible reasons.
The calendar. Deadpool 2 was initially supposed to open in early June, but Fox wisely moved it up a couple weeks to precede Memorial Day weekend. Still, a mid-May opening puts Deadpool 2 in the thick of the summer movie season, with another Marvel superhero saga still doing strong business (Avengers came in second this weekend with an estimated $28.7 million and with 4,002 screens still locked up) and a new Star Wars movie (Solo) set to dominate the holiday next weekend.
Meanwhile, the first Deadpool had the advantage of opening on President's Day weekend in February, where it not only had no real competition at the multiplex (the other movies opening that weekend were now-forgotten comedies How To Be Single and Zoolander 2), but it also had a Monday work holiday that would have driven more viewers to go to the theater on Sunday. Oh, and that Sunday was also Valentine's Day, and since Deadpool had more couples'-appeal than most superhero movies (well, at least with a tiny bit more romance, and with Ryan Reynolds in the lead), that helped as well.
The royal wedding. Speaking of romance, it's not yet clear how much Saturday's nuptials for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle affected the box office, but it's not unreasonable to assume that some of Saturday's big drop off in business had to do with people staying home to watch the DVR recording of the wee-hours wedding. In addition to the female viewers who might have chosen to watch the red-haired prince over the red-suited Reynolds, the wedding seems to have had special appeal for black viewers, given the bride's African-American heritage and the lively sermon by an African-American Episcopal preacher, Rev. Michael Curry. Exit polls for Deadpool 2 show that just 13 percent of the movie's viewers were African-American; for a superhero action movie, that percentage ought to be higher.
The competition. The other draw that might have kept women away from Deadpool 2 was Book Club, which performed slightly higher than expected. The bawdy comedy about four senior women was expected to debut with about $9 or $10 million, but it pulled in an estimated $12.5 million, good for third place. Distributor Paramount's polling found that the audience was 80 percent female and 88 percent over age 35. That means at least five movies in the top 10 (including Life of the Party, Breaking In, Overboard, and RBG) had built-in appeal to older women. To the extent that the R-rated Deadpool 2 depended on older audiences to make up for the restriction against under-17s, all that competition had to have put at least a dent into the film's weekend take.
Sequel fatigue. This is the scariest possibility, at least for an industry that remembers how lackluster last summer was. During a season when second installments (and third, and fourth...) of familiar franchise blockbusters are supposed to generate 40 percent of the year's business, the failure of many of last summer's sequels to ignite audience interest was a disaster, and this summer may face the same problem. Packed into the next few weeks are such highly anticipated sequels and reboots as Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ocean's 8, Incredibles 2, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingtom, but beyond that, the summer has few likely smashes. Plus, the saturation of so many such movies over such a short period of time means that the movies could cannibalize each other; moviegoers have only so many entertainment dollars to spend these days, and they're being extra selective. Back when Deadpool was released, in February 2016, it had enough breathing room to ultimately triple its opening weekend haul. Deadpool 2 won't get that chance.
And Deadpool 2 is a movie that critics and audiences actually liked. Imagine how hard it will be for a movie that's well-hyped but merely mediocre to break through the clutter. If even movies that seem to work can't draw enough viewers, what happens to the rest of Hollywood's release slate?