Why Deadpool 2 Will Make A Billion Dollars At the Box Office (Prediction)
Prediction:
Deadpool 2 will make over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
Мy complete underestimation of the box office potential of the original Deadpool is something that’s referenced whenever I predict anything at all. I had originally pegged Deadpool as being a niche geek phenomenon character who would have trouble breaking out to a larger audience, ala Scott Pilgrim, and the feature film starring Ryan Reynolds would be a relative bomb, maybe opening to $30m or so. I had my reasons — that Deadpool was too meme-y and weird for general audiences, the R-rating, and Ryan Reynolds having a string of high-profile box office bombs behind him (RIPD, Green Lantern, X-Men Origins WHERE HE PLAYED THE SAME CHARACTER…KIND OF).
Of course, I was wrong. I was the most wrong I’ve ever been, and I’ve been wrong a lot. The film not only broke pretty much every record it could at the time (biggest opening for a February release, biggest opening for an R-rated movie), it became a legitimate sensation — finishing up as the highest grossing (worldwide) R-rated movie in history at $783m. Of course, it had a few things going for it (beyond simply being a breath of fresh air for the MUCH IN NEED OF PARODYING superhero genre) — it faced very little competition in the weeks after its release, there hadn’t been a big R-rated comedy in a while, and it had a stellar marketing campaign.
So why the hell do I think Deadpool 2 is capable of grossing $250m more worldwide THAN THE BIGGEST R-RATED FILM IN MOVIE HISTORY?
Let’s go over the arguments against it first — the biggest and most obvious is the release date: May 18th, aka right smack dab in one of the biggest months in movie history. A few weeks prior to its release, Avengers: Infinity War is coming out (and looking to be one of the hugest blockbusters that ever blockbusted, breaking pre-sales ticket records within SIX HOURS), and one week after Deadpool 2 comes Solo — which, even with the messy behind-the-scenes stuff, is still a Star Wars film and is therefore going to deliver some pretty massive box office returns. Hell, even Rogue One made over a billion dollars.
This is important because people don’t have infinite money nor infinite time to go to movie theaters — and Infinity War, Deadpool 2, and Solo are all largely targeting similar audiences. Will that many people want to line-up for 3 separate blockbusters all within the same month?