In the Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively box-office showdown, both husband and wife came out winners.
Reynolds’ Marvel Studios smash Deadpool & Wolverine remained the top movie in North American theatres for the third straight week with US$54.2 million (S$71.8 million) in ticket sales according to studio estimates on Sunday (Aug 11). Worldwide, it’s now surpassed US$1 billion. Deadpool & Wolverine, though, was closely followed by It Ends With Us, the romance drama starring Lively, which surpassed expectations with a stellar US$50 million debut.
Together, the films created a kind of family edition of Barbenheimer, in which a pair of very different movies thrived in part due to counterprogramming. Only this time, the opposite movies were fronted by one of Hollywood’s most famous couples. The films’ one-two punch wasn’t entirely unprecedented. In 1990, Bruce Willis’ Die Hard 2 led the box office while Demi Moore’s Ghost came in second.
The weekend also featured a high-priced flop. Borderlands, the long-delayed US$120-million videogame adaptation directed by Eli Roth, launched with a paltry US$8.8 million for Lionsgate. The film, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black, was shot all the way back in 2021. After delays and reshoots, it finally landed in theatres effectively dead-on-arrival; it scored just 10 per cent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and seems likely contend for one of the worst movies of the year.
Meanwhile, Deadpool & Wolverine, which co-stars Hugh Jackman, continued its march through box-office records. The film, directed by Shawn Levy, is only the second R-rated movie to reach US$1 billion, following 2019’s Joker. In three weeks, it’s already one of the most lucrative Marvel releases and trails only Disney’s other 2024 smash, Inside Out (US$1.6 billion worldwide) among movies released this year.