Wife wins over hubby again at the daily box office as Blake Lively‘s It Ends With Us, which she starred in and produced, made $5.5 million Wednesday, compared to Ryan Reynolds‘ Deadpool & Wolverine, which did $5.3M. It marks the third day in the row that the Sony/Wayfarer Studios romance drama, directed and starring Justin Baldoni, has led the box office; the pic took second place last weekend with $50M to D&W‘s $53.7M.
Despite Alien: Romulus set to soak up $40M+ at No. 1 this weekend, It Ends With Us is expected to gross around $22M, off 56% from its debut week. Some believe it can hold even better than that. D&W is looking at a $30M weekend. Summer is clearly not over yet.
Propelling It Ends With Us to great heights is Lively’s social media at 50M strong and the popularity of the pic’s source material: the BookTok-fueled author Colleen Hoover. Equally intriguing to fans, and in no way an impact at the box office, is ton of gossip-fueled behind-the-scenes drama headlines between Lively and Baldoni. No bother, it just heightens the on-screen tensions between their characters. It Ends With Us is also a boom for the romance drama, a genre that has been owned by streaming in recent years.
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Deadpool & Wolverine from Disney/Marvel Studios and starring Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, counts a running total of $512.2M. Some believe it has a shot at beating Inside Out 2 as the year’s highest-grossing movie to date. As of now, the Disney/Pixar movie’s stateside gross stands at $638.4M.
The last time a husband-and-wife team had two big movies opening next to each other was 1990 with Bruce Willis’ Die Hard 2 and Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze’s Ghost.