‘It Ends With Us’ vs. ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’

Husband and wife Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are set to face off at the box office this weekend, despite the fact that their movies are aimed at dudes and women, respectively.

The most wonderful surprise that everyone is buzzing about is Wayfarer Studios and Sony‘s feature take of author Colleen Hoover’s first novel It Ends With Us, starring Lively and Justin Baldoni and directed by the latter. Presales are through the roof, with opening estimates quite wild. At the low end is NRG’s $23 million, which even if this $25M co-production falls apart and opens at that level is still amazing for a female-skewing pic, the marketplace and Lively as a leading lady.

For Mrs. Ryan Reynolds (who made a cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine), her last live-action feature that did respectable business was 2018’s A Simple Favor ($16M); even with a $23M start, It Ends With Us would rank as the Gossip Girl alum’s third-highest lead-star domestic opening behind Green Lantern ($53.1M — she co-starred with Reynolds in that one) and Ben Affleck’s The Town ($23.8M).

Presales indicate a $30M+ opening for It Ends With Us, fueled by the author’s fandom — she is a “BookTok” cultural phenomenon with 2 billion-plus views on her TikTok hashtag and more than 25 million books sold stateside. We already told you that first-day presales for It Ends With Us outstripped that of Sony’s 2022 sleeper summer romance title Where the Crawdads Sing by nearly four times; that movie debuted to $17.2M and doing a 5.2x multiple for $90.2M.

Some exhibitors’ projections on It Ends With Us are super high, in the $40M-$50M range, and that’s based off presales. The concern is that the movie, given how female-heavy it is, is front-loaded and therefore business would be confined to Thursday previews and Friday and crater after that. We’ll see.

The film does deal with the serious topic of domestic abuse, an aspect that’s been largely hidden in ads. But fans of the book are fully aware of the plot, which follows Lily Bloom (Lively), who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and chase a lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar) suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle is upended, and Lily realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future.

It Ends With Us will be in better financial shape by leaps and bounds than Lionsgate‘s feature adaptation of popular videogame Borderlands, which cost the studio $110M-$120M before a $30M+ P&A spend. Why so high for the Eli Roth-directed movie? Its mega all-star cast in Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana Greenblatt, Edgar Ramirez and Gina Gershon. Tim Miller stepped in for reshoots when Roth had a scheduling conflict.

Lionsgate aimed to be responsible in financing, with 60% of the production cost covered by presales and extra dough from LG’s slate-financing deal with Media Capital Technologies. The expected start for Borderlands isn’t that high in regards to its budget, in the $15M range give or take at 3,000 locations with some sharing of Imax screens with Deadpool & Wolverine. There’s also an offshore launch in 74 territories. Borderlands was greenlit by the Joe Drake Lionsgate administration.

Meanwhile, Deadpool & Wolverine is expected to lead its third weekend with $50M, -48%. By the way, Barbie‘s third weekend was $53M. The MCU title directed, produced and co-written by Shawn Levy became the second movie this year in the U.S. and Canada to pass $400M, after Inside Out 2, off a $12.2M Monday. The pic hits $407.6M in its 11th day at the box office, faster than both Barbie (14 days) and Inside Out 2 (13 days). The fastest movie to hit $400M is Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame, which reached the milestone in five days in 2019.

Looking to add further to depth to the arthouse B.O. is Neon‘s Tilman Singer horror movie Cuckoo, starring Hunter Schafer as a young adult who has been adopted by the strangest family, and forced to move with them to a resort in the German Alps. The new set of parents keep odd company with a scientist played by Dan Stevens who is doing experiments. We’ll stop with the logline there. Already 84% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, this $7M-budgeted production, which sold overseas to Focus, is already primed to do good business at a low level; its P&A is lower than the under $10M spend of Longlegs. The pic is estimated to do $3M in its opening at 1,500 screens. If it makes $5M in its entire domestic run, Neon will be in fine shape on the pic.

Cuckoo is dated here given the August market’s penchant for edgy movies, and Neon trailered Cuckoo on Longlegs, further amping its profile. The pic is trending the best with the adults 25-34 and LGBTQ+ demos.