Weekend Box Office Predictions: July 26th, 2024 - July 28th, 2024

Disney and Marvel's Deadpool & Wolverine makes its much anticipated debut in theatres this weekend. The teaming up of two of Marvel's most popular characters, while also bringing those characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), has clearly made Deadpool & Wolverine an event film. Deadpool & Wolverine was directed by Shawn Levy and sees Ryan Reynolds return as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman return as Wolverine. Deadpool & Wolverine is playing in 4,210 locations this weekend, is playing on IMAX screens and has Thursday preview shows beginning at 3PM. On the average, critical reviews for Deadpool & Wolverine have been good. Like each of the previous two Deadpool films, Deadpool & Wolverine is also rated R. While R-rated films are at a disadvantage when it comes to generating massive opening weekend grosses, 2016's Deadpool and 2018's Deadpool 2 currently have the two largest R-rated opening weekends of all-time with respective starts of $132.43 million and $125.51 million. And with the passing of time, the audiences for Deadpool (as well as Wolverine and the MCU) have grown older, which should make the R rating for Deadpool & Wolverine even less of a factor than it was for the previous two Deadpool films.

To help meet the initial demand for the film, Deadpool & Wolverine looks to be receiving an extremely high amount of average showtimes per location this weekend. Back in 2022, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness started out with $187.42 million, while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever opened with $181.34 million. It appears likely that Deadpool & Wolverine will open at least in the same neighborhood as those two films did and will have a strong chance of going even higher. One factor that could slightly hold back the break-out start of Deadpool & Wolverine this weekend is that the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris begin on Friday (but that will likely be only a minor factor overall). BoxOfficeReport is predicting that Deadpool & Wolverine will debut with an exceptional $201.0 million this weekend. That would represent the largest opening weekend of 2024 thus far (a mark currently held by fellow Disney release Inside Out 2), the largest opening weekend ever for an R-rated film (easily surpassing the previously mentioned Deadpool), the largest opening weekend ever for the month of July (a mark currently held by 2019's The Lion King with $191.77 million and the ninth largest unadjusted opening weekend of all-time.

Universal's Twisters is coming off of an exceptional domestic start of its own last weekend when the disaster film outpaced all exceptions with $81.25 million. In addition to outpacing opening weekend expectations, Twisters has been holding up very nicely thus far for a film of its size. Twisters has gone over fairly well with critics and also looks to be going over well with audiences after receiving a good A- rating on CinemaScore. And with the back-loaded performance of 1996's Twister in mind, there may very well be some built-in natural back-loading for Twisters going forward. However, as for this weekend Twisters obviously has to go face to face with Deadpool & Wolverine, which will no doubt have a negative impact on Twisters. In addition to the fairly direct competition itself, Twisters will be losing its IMAX screens to Deadpool & Wolverine and will also be losing a larger percentage of its non-IMAX screens than a film that opened as well as it did would typically lose in its second weekend of release. Twisters could also get a slight boost from serving as a PG-13 rated alternative to the R-rated Deadpool & Wolverine this weekend, though at the same time the audience for Twisters has been skewing significantly older thus far. Twisters could decline 52.6 percent this weekend to take second place with $38.5 million. Given the situation, that hold would be much stronger than it appears on the surface and would point towards Twisters being able to stabilize nicely once this weekend is out of the way.

After taking second and third place last weekend, computer animated blockbuster sequels Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 are set to take third and fourth place this weekend. Last weekend, Universal and Illumination's Despicable Me 4 declined 44.0 percent to place in second with $24.44 million, while Disney and Pixar's Inside Out 2 decreased 35.7 percent to take third with $12.83 million. Inside Out 2 is likely to continue to hold up better than Despicable Me 4 this weekend, especially with Inside Out 2 likely getting at least a small boost from playing with Deadpool & Wolverine as part of some drive-in double features this weekend. Look for Despicable Me 4 to decline 36.6 percent to place in third this weekend with $15.5 million and for Inside Out 2 to decline just 26.7 percent to follow in fourth with $9.4 million.

Even with Deadpool & Wolverine entering the marketplace this weekend, NEON's Longlegs should still remain a factor at the box office. Last weekend, the break-out R-rated horror film declined an encouraging 46.6 percent for a second weekend fourth place gross of $11.97 million. On Wednesday, Longlegs surpassed the $50 million domestic mark, making it the second ever NEON release to do so. Longlegs could experience a bit of further stabilization this weekend to decline a very respectable 41.5 percent for a fifth place take of $7.0 million. That would move Longlegs past the $53.37 million final domestic gross of 2019's Parasite to make Longlegs the highest grossing film ever for NEON domestically.

Read more at BoxOfficeReport.com.