NEW YORK — In the box office showdown between Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, both husband and wife emerged victorious.
“Deadpool & Wolverine,” the Marvel Studios blockbuster directed by Reynolds, was the top movie in North American theaters for a third straight week with ticket sales of $54.2 million, according to studio estimates on Sunday. Its worldwide gross has now surpassed $1 billion. But it was closely followed by “It Ends With Us,” a romantic drama starring Lively that opened with a better-than-expected $50 million debut.
These movies were like a family version of Babenheimer, where competing programming resulted in two very different hit movies, except this time they starred one of Hollywood’s most famous couples in polar opposite movies. This one-two punch of movies wasn’t entirely unprecedented: In 1990, Bruce Willis’ Die Hard 2 topped the box office, and Demi Moore’s Ghost came in second.
The weekend also saw some big-ticket flops. Borderlands, the $120 million video game adaptation directed by Eli Roth, was postponed after grossing just $8.8 million for Lionsgate. The movie, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black, was only filmed in 2021. After delays and reshoots, it finally hit theaters, where it essentially sold out immediately. With just a 10% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s shaping up to be one of the worst movies of the year.
Meanwhile, Deadpool & Wolverine, co-starring Hugh Jackman, continues to break box-office records. Directed by Shawn Levy, the film is the second R-rated movie to reach the $1 billion mark, after 2019’s Joker. Three weeks into its release, it’s already one of Marvel’s highest-grossing films, and the second-highest-grossing film of the year behind Disney’s 2024 blockbuster Inside Out ($1.6 billion worldwide).
Lively has a cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine, but she also stars in and produces It Ends With Us. In this film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling romance novel, Lively plays Lily Bloom, a Boston florist who is torn between two men: the love of her life (Justin Baldoni, who also directs the film) and her first love (Brandon Sklener).
“It Ends With Us” was made on a modest budget of $25 million, which should make a big profit for co-financiers Columbia Pictures and Wayfarer Studios. Like Sony’s summer release of “Where the Crawdad’s Thing,” a women’s novel adaptation, “It Ends With Us” could hold its own in the typically slow box office month of August. Audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore.
Reynolds and Lively have at times emphasized the intersection of their films. Earlier this week, Reynolds posted a video of himself asking Sklener questions about the trip. The timing worked out particularly well for Lively, whose film grossed double its opening weekend box office projections.
Neon’s “Cuckoo,” a horror film set in the German Alps from filmmaker Tilman Singer, starring Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, opened to $3 million on 1,503 screens.
