What Will Deadpool 3 Make at the Box Office? (A Very Tentative Prediction for Entertainment Purposes Only)

The past year has been a more than usually chaotic one for film release schedules, given the disruption of Hollywood's first "double strike" (by both the actors and writers) since 1960, compelling the delay of work on a good many movie productions to the point of bumping their release dates from 2024 into 2025.

One result is that while this year will, as usual, have plenty of superhero stuff and even Marvel stuff (particularly Spider-Man-related stuff, like Madame Web, Venom 3, Kraven the Hunter, milking that most consistently successful franchise), there will only be one proper Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) release, Deadpool 3.

How well can we expect it to do?

For a start, we can look at how past Deadpool films have done.

The first Deadpool movie made $363 million domestically, and a total of $782 million worldwide, back in 2016--which works out to a $470 million hit at home, and a billion-dollar global gross when we adjust for December 2023 prices (a feat the more impressive because there was no Chinese release).

The second Deadpool movie made just a little less--$318 million domestically, $735 million globally, or in December 2023 prices, about $387 million domestically and just under $900 million globally.

Thinking in terms of the average of the two films we would get a gross of $430 million domestically, and around $950 million globally--sensational numbers. If we instead see the trend of decline suggested by the drop in gross from the first film to the second continue we can, anticipating a Deadpool 2-like drop from its predecessor, picture the movie making over $300 million+ domestically, and $800 million globally. This is less sensational, but still very, very good for a Deadpool movie--and indeed way better than what one can expect for a superhero movie, a Marvel movie, a franchise movie after the disastrous year of 2023.

That said, let us look at those expectations more closely. While the tendency toward franchise films in the superhero, spy-fi and associated genres crashing and burning has been broadly evident across Hollywood's output (the DCEU suffered, too, and so did Indiana Jones, and the Fast and Furious, and Mission: Impossible), to the point of making the kind of collapse that Solo represented for the Star Wars series now routine, let us focus in on the MCU specifically. Marvel's late Phase Four and early Phase Five films (from Thor 4 through Guardians of the Galaxy 3) showed 20 to 50 percent drops in their global grosses compared with the immediate predecessors in their series'. Already bad enough in itself, Captain Marvel 2 (aka The Marvels), which has pretty much finished its run with $200 million in the till (against the $1.1 billion the original picked up in 2019), saw an even worse 85 percent collapse (after adjustment for inflation).

A 20 to 50 percent collapse from Deadpool 2's gross would leave the movie with about $450-$700 million worldwide--which graded on the curve most now seem to be using would not be too bad (especially at the high end of the range). A Captain Marvel 2-like 85 percent collapse would leave it with just $150 million in the till, which would be a new low for the battered MCU.

For now these two figures--$150 million and $700 million--seem to me to represent the most extreme possibilities. I do not, at this point, see reason to think Deadpool 3 will suffer as badly as Captain Marvel 2 did. After all, even Aquaman 2, for all its troubles, is doing considerably better, showing that even now $200 million is not the ceiling for such films (Aquaman 2, flop that it may be, is on its way to grossing twice that), and Captain Marvel 2 had a very great deal working against it (production delays, an awkward tie-in with small-screen Marvel, rather weak early promotion, a sharp change in tone from the predecessor, etc.), more than Deadpool probably will.

At the same time I know no reason to think that Deadpool will manage to go very far in bucking the broader trend. The first movie, and even the second, seemed to command some real affection from fans, who may be more willing to give a new Deadpool movie a chance than other "usual" Marvel releases, but this sequel will still be hitting theaters six years after the last film (which itself, again, had shown some evidences of the fan base's erosion), in a time in which Marvel is looking very tarnished indeed and superhero fatigue is not so easily denied as the claqueurs would have us believe. The result is that, with the release still four months off and a lot possibly happening between now and then I find myself looking toward the middle of the range I have cited above--between the relatively slight Guardians of the Galaxy drop, and the extreme Captain Marvel drop. The result is that, for the time being, the safest guess seems to be that the movie's gross will be in the $400-$450 million range (while I would add that given the trend of things it is easier to see the movie doing worse than better).