‘Deadpool’s $150M+ Opening: Why The Town Didn’t See It Coming Until It Happened

20th Century Fox’s Deadpool is bigger than anyone thought possible. Yes, it has scored the top opening for a February release with $135M over FSS and $150M-$153M over FSSM, beating Fifty Shades of Grey‘s first weekend figures last year.  But, Deadpool also flogged Matrix Reloaded‘s $91.8M opening record to become the highest R-rated debut of all-time, not to mention it’s the biggest opening Fox executives have ever seen, surpassing Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (FSS $108.4M).

How did Deadpool set the box office on fire? Fox conservatively projected the weekend for this R-rated supehero movie in the $60M-$65M range last week. Rival distribution chiefs had the Marvel anti-hero film as high as $80M. But even they were off.

As we saw with the surprise then-all-time record opening of Jurassic World last June, when it comes to record openings and tracking, the statistical sampling is small, making it hard for industry chiefs to predict. There was a little bit of that going on with Deadpool.

"Invest in the brand!"