Weekend projections: Deadpool holds off fantastic opening for It Ends With Us

Deadpool & Wolverine remains the top earner at the box office this weekend, but will do so by a narrow margin, as It Ends With Us is heading for for the second-best opening weekend in history for a romantic drama. When final numbers come in, Deadpool will land around $54 million, while It Ends With Us will bring in about $50 million this weekend, according to studio projections.

Here’s how the weekend numbers look as of Sunday morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…

Deadpool will end the weekend with around $494.3 million domestically, and another $535.2 million internationally, taking it past $1 billion worldwide, with $1,029.5 million. That takes it past Oppenheimer to become the second-highest grossing R-rated movie at the global box office. Only Joker, with $1.064 billion, has earned more among R-rated movies, and that record should be broken within the next week.

Inside Out 2, meanwhile, continues its march up the all-time chart with its $1.594 billion making it the tenth-highest grossing film of all time. It will pass Barbie’s $636.2 million at the the domestic box office today.

The good news for the industry continues this weekend with a remarkable opening for It Ends With Us. The romantic drama is set to earn $50 million, according to Sony Pictures. Depending upon one’s definition of what makes for a romantic drama (does Twilight count, for example?), this is the best debut for the genre since Fifty Shades of Grey (which we have listed as an erotic drama). Fifty Shades debuted with $85.1 million in 2015.

The performance of It Ends With Us was undoubtedly greatly helped by the enormously-popular book it was based on. That usually means relatively short legs for a film (see Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey). But a $50-million start guarantees $100 million at the domestic box office, and more Colleen Hoover adaptations to come.

Borderlands is a movie that won’t be getting a sequel, after posting a dismal $8.8 million on opening weekend. It looked like it was struggling after it earned only $1.32 million from previews, but that proved to be the high point of the weekend for the movie. This is a movie that will, Lionsgate hopes, be quickly forgotten.

– Studio weekend projections

– All-time top-grossing movies in North America

– All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com