Box Office Weekend: Deadpool Wins Hearts and Big Time Box Office

An R-rated superhero movie is always a bit of a gamble, for while many find their audiences in cult appeal long after the fact, few of them prove bankable at the box office, and even fewer prove hits with critics. However, Deadpool upped the bar with not only a smash opening for any movie, but critical praise as well. Its estimated $135.1 million broke past its $58 million budget and easily took the top spot of the weekend, proving that an edgier superhero can not only be liked, but can turn a profit as well.

Little else proved to be competitive…Kung Fu Panda 3 continues to slowly gain earnings, but with an estimated $19.7 million, even foreign earnings may not be enough to make the third entry of the series a profitable one. If its budget cost anywhere near the roughly $130-$150 million of the previous movies, its $256.1 million in worldwide gross is barely enough to make it break even. Meanwhile, the Drew Barrymore-produced How to Be Single landed in third with a tepid critical response and a mild $18.8 million estimated weekend take (and what could be a struggle to make back its $38 million in costs), while Zoolander 2 failed to make much headway with an estimated $15.7 million. The sequel made roughly what the original made in its opening weekend…fifteen years (and quite a bit of inflation) ago.

The Revenant still rides high with an estimated $6.9 million adding to what appears to be a somewhat disappointing domestic take of $159.2 million, but adding its substantial worldwide take, it is doing very well indeed. Hail, Caesar!, on the other hand, slipped from its lofty second-place perch of last week to an estimated $6.6 million, and with no foreign box office as of yet, it remains quite a ways from making back its $22 million in costs. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, meanwhile, might be falling back a bit in the top ten, but at an estimated $6.2 million on the weekend it is still piling on heavily with its $914.8 million in the bank domestically and over $2 billion in earnings worldwide.

In the final three spots, The Choice remains decidedly unpopular, the romantic drama and its estimated $5.3 million giving it the dubious honor of lowest earning film currently in the top ten (with $13.3 million earned domestically). Ride Along 2 may not have been the smash hit that the first film was, but an estimated $4.1 million allowed it break even and prove a mild success on top of that, counting worldwide gross. And finally, The Boy, while not winning critic awards anytime soon, proved a success on its own means with an estimated $2.9 million bringing in $30.8 million on a $10 million budget.

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Seth Paul

When not failing to write novels and screenplays, box-office guru Seth writes humorous comedy tracks for films under the name "The One Man Band" that can be found at Rifftrax.com. Although, he has recently succeeded in writing the novella "Jack Alan and the Case of the Not-Exactly Rocket Scientists," available as an eBook on Amazon. He is also the English voice of Zak in "Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space."

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