It’s a happy morning at the Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds household no matter which way you slice and dice it, with separate movies from the couple providing their very own Barbenheimer movement.
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Sony’s new female-powered It Ends With Us , starring and produced by Lively, topped reigning champ Deadpool & Wolverine on Friday with a stellar $24 million, including $11 million in previews. Marvel Studios and Disney’s Deadpool movie — from Reynolds and director Shawn Levy — took in $15.7 million on its third Friday.
Most are predicting that Deadpool will pull ahead on Saturday and stay atop the domestic chart for its third consecutive weekend with $50 million to $56 million as it jumps the $1 billion mark worldwide.
Opening weekend estimates for It Ends With Us vary wildly, or anywhere from $47 million to $50 million. Sony insiders are suggesting $45 million to $49 million, a sensational number that would mark Lively’s biggest opening in a leading role.
Either way, the combo of the movies is a big win for the August box office, with overall domestic revenue expected to be up 35 percent over the same weekend last year, and even more noteworthy, 19 percent ahead of 2019, the last year before the pandemic.
Heading into the weekend, the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s runaway best-selling novel was tracking to open to $23 million, although exhibitors thought more along the lines of $40 million based on presales. The film’s performance, buoyed by an A-CinemaScore and 95 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, underscores the pent-up demand for a female-targeted film.
Ticket buyers so far for It Ends With Us are 84 percent female spread across all adult age groups; 60 percent are between ages 18 and 34, while 33 are age 35 and older. It also has a notable advantage in appealing to an ethnically diverse audience.
It Ends With Us stars Lively as Lily Bloom, a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and fulfill a lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin 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.
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It is the first of Hoover’s books to be adapted for the big screen. The film is directed by Baldoni and cost a modest $25 million to produce before marketing.
Some have pitched the dueling Reynolds-Lively movies as a showdown, but the opposite is the case, according to insiders. Reynolds, a marketing savant, and Lively hoped the two very different films would indeed result in a Barbenheimer moment whereby both films become top of mind.
Reynolds and Lively have been supporting each other’s films in major ways, and it may not entirely be a coincidence that they opened so close to each other. It Ends With Us was originally supposed to hit theaters June 21 but was pushed back to Aug. 9. As a producer of the film, Lively likely had some sway when the new date was selected.
Earlier this week, Reynolds posted a humorous Instagram clip of himself, his mother (Tammy Reynolds) and Deadpool & Wolverine co-star Hugh Jackman separately interrogating Sklenar during a recent press day for Lively’s new film.
Jackman and Reynolds — who are besties — also flanked Lively as she walked the pink carpet of It Ends With Us ‘ world premiere on Tuesday.
As noted earlier this week , the last time a married couple had their films top the domestic box office was 34 years ago. In 1990, Bruce Willis’ Die Hard 2 stayed atop the chart in its second weekend with $14.5 million, and Demi Moore’s Ghost opened in second place with $12.2 million.
The weekend’s other new nationwide entry is Lionsgate’s big-budget Borderlands , which bit the dust Thursday evening with $1.32 million in previews and a D+ CinemaScore. The movie is now expected to open to $8.5 million to $10 million.
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