Yesterday, the David Leitch-directed, R-rated farce, Deadpool 2, crossed the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office. Coincidentally enough, we also learned yesterday that one of the year’s biggest blockbusters, Solo: A Star Wars Story, probably won’t even reach the half-billion mark when all is said and done.
Bafflingly, the Ron Howard-directed space western made just $84.7 million stateside opening weekend, a figure topped with ease by the foul-mouthed mercenary’s sequel, having hauled in $125 million upon its release, which was good enough for the second biggest domestic R-rated opening.
Given that practically every Star Wars film to hit theaters under the tenure of Disney has grossed, at the very least, $150 million-plus upon release, the fact that Deadpool 2 bested the opening weekend total of Solo is as much of a surprise to Leitch as it was to the respective fandoms.
During a sit-down with ComicBook.com, Leitch attributed the success of his sequel, and the flick’s triumph over Solo, to his cast and crew.
“We always approached everything in Deadpool, Ryan and I, we tried to say, ‘We can’t operate from a place of fear. We knew we were going to open up near Han Solo, but we knew we also were going to make a…
You know, Deadpool was a very special brand. And so, it was like, they’re different movies and let’s just aggressively go forward and make the best movie possible and who knows.”
In fact, he loved his co-workers so much that he’s eager to get back in the director’s chair for Deadpool 3, should the opportunity present itself.
“I would love to. It’s just ‘if’ and ‘when’ and all of that. It was such an amazing experience and collaborating with Ryan [Reynolds], Rhett [Reese] and Paul [Wernick] and Simon [Kinberg], Kelly McCormick. It’s such a great creative team and such a positive atmosphere and we had so much fun. We worked our ass off, but I would do it all over again, for sure. Count me in.”
Deadpool 2 has more than made back the $110 million it cost to produce the sequel and is slowly but surely creeping up on The Hangover Part II now, the current record holder for highest grossing comedy sequel of all-time ($587M). Whether it’ll pass it or not remains to be seen, but the Merc certainly looks like he has a good chance of doing so.