Deadpool & Wolverine Box Office Hits Rare Milestone Only 5 MCU Movies Accomplished

Deadpool & Wolverine is set to pass a huge domestic box office milestone that only five other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies have crossed before. The movie, which marks the first time that Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman's titular heroes have appeared in the franchise, is the 34th installment in the MCU and the fourth theatrical release in Phase 5. The Deadpool & Wolverine box office has pulled the MCU out of its slump after 2023's The Marvels became its lowest-grossing film ever, as the 2024 teamup quickly rose past $1 billion and became the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Deadpool & Wolverine is projected to pass the $600 milestone at the domestic box office by the end of the four-day Labor Day holiday weekend. This will make it the 16th movie to ever pass that enormous milestone in North America, with the most recent before it having been Pixar's Inside Out 2, which currently sits at a total of $647.2 million. It will also become the sixth of the MCU's 34 movies to have passed that milestone.

How Deadpool & Wolverine Compares To Other MCU Hits

The 2024 Movie Is A Dazzling Success

By passing this milestone, Deadpool & Wolverine has entered rarefied air for the franchise. Of the five Marvel movies above it on the all-time domestic chart, three are Avengers crossover movies featuring teamups of the franchise's most prominent heroes. Only two others, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Black Panther, center on heroes who are the leads of their own subfranchises. Below, see how the movie's total at the end of the holiday weekend compares to the MCU movies that are above it on the domestic chart:

The Deadpool & Wolverine release climbing so high up the chart is a staggering result considering that it is the first R-rated release ever put out by the franchise. Every other movie in the MCU has been rated PG-13, which allowed them to be open to a much wider audience base, though that does not seem to have limited the prospects of the new 2024 title in any significant way. In fact, it is excelling on the domestic chart in ways that another of its predecessors has been unable to.

Although 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron is still above Deadpool & Wolverine on the franchise's worldwide box office chart for the MCU, it performed considerably worse than the new movie in the domestic marketplace and only made up for it with international grosses. That movie ranks at No. 27 on the all-time domestic chart at the time of writing with a gross of $459 million. This throws the new movie's ability to connect with North American audiences into even sharper relief.

What Will Be The Next MCU Movie To Pass $600 Million Domestic?

There Are Quite A Few Upcoming Titles That Are Already Announced

Although Deadpool & Wolverine is the sixth movie in the franchise to pass this major milestone, it will most likely not be the last. Even though there have been recent box office stumbles including The Marvels and 2023's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there is still an enormous capacity for success. However, not just any Marvel movie has the ability to break past $600 million at the domestic box office, as has been proven by the domestic grosses of the previous installments that have not achieved that record, ranging from The Marvels' $84.5 million to Age of Ultron's $459 million.

It seems likely that the success of Deadpool & Wolverine came from the movie's potent combination of iconic legacy characters with the fact that Hugh Jackman's Wolverine had not been seen on the big screen in seven years, since 2017's Logan, while Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool had been away for six, since 2018's Deadpool 2. This combination is likely what also drove the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured cameos from previous iterations of the Spider-Man universe including the Sam Raimi trilogy from the 2000s and the Marc Webb duology from the 2010s.