8. He Proved R-Rated Superhero Flicks Totally Sell
Deadpool completely defied financial expectations on its opening weekend, far exceeding its tracking and taking $150 million domestic from a $60 million budget - with an additional $135 mil coming from overseas. It's a phenomenal opening for a film of its nature. Especially one featuring a largely unknown anti-hero, an A-lister whose star has faded in recent years (whose face hardly appeared on the marketing materials), a fairly meagre budget and, oh yeah - an R-rating. The stupid, blindly-accepted rule by major Hollywood studios is that R-rated movies don't perform well. Sure, there's a huge crowd of pre-teens and youngsters-who-can't-pass-off-looking-17 whose money they won't get, but that doesn't mean that R-rated comic book movies won't make any money at all. The R-rated Blade II made three times its budget back in 2002, and that was fourteen years ago. Deadpool making back four times its budget on its opening weekend is going to cause some serious waves. With the proof being firmly in the pudding, we can expect other studios to begin producing R-rated movies for their own comic book characters who exist on the saltier side of taste.
Cinephile since 1993, aged 4, when he saw his very first film in the cinema - Jurassic Park - which is also evidence of damn fine parenting. World champion at Six Degrees of Separation. Lender of DVDs to cheap mates. Connoisseur of Marvel Comics and its Cinematic Universe.
