Deadpool & Wolverine kicks off its opening weekend with massive Thursday night numbers

The initial perception of summer 2024 was that Deadpool & Wolverine would be the season’s box office savior. Movie theaters and moviegoers alike would have to hang on until “Marvel Jesus” arrived. Then Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Inside Out 2 walloped all expectations and became massive smash hits. Since then, the summer’s been buoyed by bigger than expected launches for A Quiet Place: Day One, Despicable Me 4, Longlegs, and Twisters. Deadpool & Wolverine’s inevitably large box office figures will be most welcome, but this Marvel Studios blockbuster is no longer the only big hit in town. Summer 2024 has far more successes than just this Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman vehicle.

Still, this highly anticipated project is bound to make some moolah this frame and will almost certainly surpass Inside Out 2’s $154 million debut to become 2024’s largest domestic opener. That reality was reinforced through its box office haul from Thursday night showings yesterday. it grossed $38.5 million last night, the eighth-biggest Thursday night gross in history. That was only $500,000 behind Avengers: Infinity War's Thursday night gross and $2.5 million ahead of the Thursday night gross of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. On Thursday night alone, Deadpool & Wolverine surpassed the lifetime domestic hauls of Hugh Jackman movies like Pan, CHAPPiE, Someone Like You, and The Fountain. Ryan Reynolds movies The Change-Up, R.I.P.D., Life, and Self/Less were also left in the dust.

Out of 35 previous Marvel Cinematic Universe titles, only nine have grossed $25+ million at Thursday night showings. These are:

Avengers: Endgame: $60 million

Spider-Man: No Way Home: $50 million

Avengers: Infinity War: $39 million

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: $36 million

Thor: Love and Thunder: $29 million

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: $28 million

Avengers: Age of Ultron: $27.6 million

Black Panther: $25.2 million

Captain America: Civil War: $25 million

All did at least five times their Thursday night grosses over their subsequent opening weekends…. except for Love and Thunder, which just missed that mark (it did about 4.8 times its Thursday gross over its opening weekend). Given that Love and Thunder is the only other July MCU movie to score $25+ million Thursday night previews, that could indicate Deadpool & Wolverine will be a bit more frontloaded than typical MCU films. After all, with schools and colleges out for the summer, more people can see these Marvel blockbusters on Thursday night in July compared to, say, November. More business could be concentrated on those first available showings.

Recent MCU installments have also become more frontloaded as the saga gets less and less accessible to the general public. In 2012, The Avengers grossed $18.7 million at midnight screenings. It went on to do 11 times that number over its massive $207.4 million opening weekend. Ten years later, Thor: Love and Thunder did 4.8 times its Thursday night grosses for a $144.1 million bow. We're not quite in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two territory where MCU movies get roughly 26% of their opening weekend grosses just from Thursday showings. However, these titles are drawing more and more heavily from just the geek crowd. A multiverse adventure like Deadpool & Wolverine heavy on fan-service could suffer from that trend.

There’s also a possibility, though, that the general audience reception to Deadpool & Wolverine will be significantly better than the response moviegoers gave to Love and Thunder or Multiverse of Madness. That could help it leg out a little more over the weekend. Cutting through all this jargon, where could Deadpool & Wolverine's domestic opening weekend fall now? After $38.5 million last night, if it plays like Thor: Love and Thunder on a day-to-day basis through Sunday, it'll make $184.8 million domestically this weekend. Playing more like Multiverse of Madness would bring it to a $200.2 million bow. Deadline's reporting word-of-mouth last night was solid, so for right now, let's predict something in between those two figures, around $186-190 million.

However its day-to-day patterns go, Deadpool & Wolverine is well on its way to becoming the biggest domestic opener of 2024. All it needs to do is make a hair above Inside Out 2's $154 million bow to hit that, and given that only non-Twilight movie (Thor: Love and Thunder) has ever opened to under $155 million after a $27+million Thursday night haul, Deadpool & Wolverine is full-steam ahead for that record. Check back first thing Monday morning for my breakdown of its full North American debut as well as how all the other movies in the marketplace fared on what’s sure to be a blow-out final weekend for July 2024.