‘Deadpool’ kicks off box office run with record Thursday night

20th Century Fox is seeing an incredible marketing campaign for Deadpool turn into cash. The X-Men spin-off started its box office run with a record Thursday night.

Deadpool was screened a 2,975 locations beginning at 7 p.m. on Feb. 10, earning a record $12.7 million. It broke the previous Thursday preview record for an R-rated movie, set by The Hangover Part II ($10.4 million) set in 2011, reports Variety.

Since this is a long weekend with President’s Day on Feb. 15, Deadpool is expected to gross as much as $70 million thanks in part to IMAX screenings. The film only cost $58 million to make, which is like chump change for a superhero movie.

Deadpool stars Ryan Reynolds as the title character and was directed by first-timer Tim Miller, who has been working on it for nearly a decade. The film has earned great reviews overall and earned a rapturous response from fans who were pleased to see that the movie retains the comic book character’s vulgar attitude.

The Warner Bros. romantic comedy How To be Single started with $700,000. Paramount’s Zoolander 2 started off with $750,000, notes The Hollywood Reporter.

WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on your website.

Learn more about debugging in WordPress.