Deadpool & Wolverine’s record-setting opening weekend—as predicted, it notched the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time for an R-rated film, surpassing previous top two Deadpool and Deadpool 2—had cinemas shattering some records of their own.
In a statement, NATO CEO and president Michael O’Leary praised the film as “the kind of movie you want to experience on the big screen”—and people certainly did over the weekend, to the tune of $211M domestically and $233.1M in 52 international markets, giving the Marvel threequel a $444.1M global gross as of Monday morning.
AMC Theatres
Globally, more than 6 million people caught a film over the period of Thursday, June 25 to Sunday, June 28 at an AMC location, including AMC Theatres in the U.S. and Odeon Cinemas in the U.K.
Looking specifically at Deadpool & Wolverine, the film had the highest attendance and highest opening weekend admissions revenue for a rated-R movie in the chain’s 104-year history.
Said CEO Adam Aron in a statement, “AMC has been predicting for quite some time that moviegoing would return to lofty levels this summer. The trifecta of Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, and Deadpool & Wolverine, combined with a myriad of other successful movies, has proven us right. It is certainly good news for those who care about AMC that with Deadpool & Wolverine we enjoyed the highest-ever attendance and highest-ever admissions revenue for the opening weekend of a rated-R movie in AMC’s company history. It fills us with enormous pride that more than 6 million guests visited an AMC theatre or an ODEON cinema this weekend.”
Other records broken at AMC over the weekend include those for the highest food and beverage revenue for a single weekend since 2019, driven by record sales at MacGuffin bar locations to be found in roughly two-thirds of the chain’s American locations, and highest sales of beer, wine, and cocktails of any weekend in AMC history.
Deadpool & Wolverine also gained the title of highest revenue gained through merchandise sales—check here for our rundown of the various exclusives being offered in North American cinemas—of any film this year at an AMC location, surpassing Despicable Me 4. Deadpool & Wolverine’s AMC merchandise program—said merch completely sold out over the weekend—is now the second-highest earning merchandise program in AMC’s history, behind only last year’s Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which AMC distributed.
Concluded Aron, “In the U.S., Deadpool & Wolverine also gave AMC our best weekend food and beverage revenue since 2019. Given that this also was an AMC record-breaking weekend for the sale of beer, wine, and cocktails at our MacGuffins bars, it’s only fitting that we raise a glass and toast our studio partners at Disney and Marvel, and the filmmakers of Deadpool & Wolverine for delivering a theatrical experience that has delighted and entertained millions of fans around the world. It is especially pleasing to see Disney go two-for-two back-to-back, now with the massive success of Deadpool & Wolverine, which immediately followed Disney and Pixar’s billion dollar-plus success with Inside Out 2, which was released to global acclaim just last month.”
Cinemark
Deadpool & Wolverine similarly drove Cinemark, the third-largest chain in North America, to their highest-grossing opening weekend for Cinemark XD (the chain’s proprietary PLF format) and D-Box motion seating, highest weekend concessions revenue since 2019, and highest weekend merchandise sales. Further, Deadpool & Wolverine had the highest opening weekend gross of any summer (May-August) release in Cinemark history.
“Building upon strong box office momentum over the past two months, Disney and Marvel’s highly anticipated superhero adventure, Deadpool & Wolverine, just took theatrical moviegoing to a new stratosphere,” said President and CEO Sean Gamble. “We are thrilled to share that Deadpool & Wolverine drove Cinemark’s biggest summer opening weekend of all time, generated record-breaking results in premium formats, and delivered our highest weekend of concession revenues since the pandemic. Congratulations to our partners at Disney on such record-breaking success and to our entire Cinemark team for their significant role supporting this tremendous achievement. We remain highly optimistic about the future of theatrical exhibition.”
IMAX
In addition to breaking records at Cinemark for its performance in CinemarkXD and D-box premium auditoriums, the $36.5M earned by Deadpool & Wolverine on Imax screens during opening weekend gave the PLF provider its eighth-biggest Imax global opening of all time.
Other records include:
- Widest IMAX release ever (1,642 screens across 83 markets)
- Top five IMAX opening in 21 international markets
- Biggest IMAX July opening ever
- Biggest IMAX R-rated opening weekend ever
- Biggest IMAX opening weekend of any movie since Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
- Biggest IMAX opening weekend of a Marvel movie since Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and the fourth biggest IMAX Marvel opening of all time.
On the domestic front, Deadpool & Wolverine opened to $19.1M, giving the film 9.3 percent of its domestic box office on approximately 1 percent of North America’s screens. In China, the film earned $5M in IMAX, or 21 percent of its nationwide total on fewer than 1 percent of screens.
Said IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond: “Deadpool & Wolverine delivered one of the biggest IMAX opening weekends of all time — continuing our hot start to the third quarter and furthering our momentum ahead of a fantastic slate over the next several years. Kevin Feige and his team remarkably continue to break new creative ground, and we believe Deadpool & Wolverine will only leave fans wanting more ahead of several highly anticipated Filmed for IMAX Marvel releases in 2025.”
Fandango
Last week, Fandango announced that pre-sales figures for Deadpool & Wolverine were the highest of any 2024 release, a record formerly held by Dune: Part 2. That momentum held strong over the weekend, with the film shattering Fandango’s record for most opening weekend sales for an R-rated title, surpassing Fifty Shades of Grey, which had held the record for nine years. Deadpool & Wolverine also surpassed Inside Out 2 to become Fandango’s biggest opening weekend ticket seller of 2024.
“It’s incredible to see Deadpool & Wolverine smash multiple opening weekend records on Fandango,” said EVP Jerramy Hainline. “The anticipation for this film has been high even before tickets went on sale, so it’s remarkable to see so many fans take their friends and families to watch this film on the big screen.”
Earlier this year, Deadpool & Wolverine was voted the #1 most anticipated film in Fandango’s 2024 Most Anticipated Movies Survey of over 8,000 ticket-buyers and the #1 most anticipated summer movie in Fandango’s 2024 Moviegoing Trends & Insights Study of over 6,000 moviegoers.
Reading International
Multinational circuit Reading International, which operates in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, saw Deadpool & Wolverine break records both in the domestic market and internationally. In the U.S., the film had the biggest opening weekend gross ever on the chain’s PLF formats, including proprietary formats (TITAN LUX, TITAN) and Imax; globally, it was the biggest PLF debut since 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder. Looking to F&B, a special Deadpool & Wolverine combo item gave Reading’s Australian operations their best-selling F&B opening weekend item and helped drive the chain to its second-best opening weekend F&B revenues ever. In America, a special Deadpool & Wolverine menu and Deadpool & Wolverine merch helped break records for the highest-ever single-day F&B spend per patron (Thursday, July 25), the biggest opening weekend in terms of F&B revenue since the pandemic, and the highest-earning movie merchandise revenues for a single movie.
Reading President and CEO Ellen Cotter said in a statement: “The powerful marketing efforts of Disney and Marvel delivered a tremendous result with Deadpool & Wolverine smashing multiple industry records, including delivering the highest R-rated opening weekend of all time both worldwide and domestic. This past weekend’s box office in each of our U.S., Australian and New Zealand cinema divisions was far and away the highest in 2024. And, with a Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score of 97% and an ‘A’ CinemaScore, we expect Deadpool & Wolverine to have long legs. This weekend’s results follow amazing box office performances for certain movies that opened during June and July 2024, such as Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, Twisters and Bad Boys: Ride or Die. We look forward to this strong momentum continuing into the second half of 2024 with eagerly anticipated movies like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Joker: Folie a Deux, Wicked, Gladiator II, Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog 3.”
B&B Theatres
B&B Theatres also posted records over Deadpool & Wolverine opening weekend, including those for the biggest single-day box office receipts for a Thursday, Friday (including sneak previews), and Saturday; second-biggest pre-sales for a single film; and biggest domestic market share percentage on a Marvel title.
Said CEO Bob Bagby: “What a movie and what a week! We’re so grateful to our guests who showed up by the hundreds of thousands over the last few days. This film’s extraordinary performance highlights the unique magic of the theatrical experience, where audiences come together to share in the excitement and wonder of cinema. We celebrated 100 years of family ownership in April. We couldn’t have imagined a better way to kick off the next century of movie magic!”
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