Marvel may have experienced box office flops in the past year with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels. But it was a given that seeing Deadpool & Wolverine teaming up in their own movie would bring Marvel Studios back to its dominating box office trend, grossing $824.1 million worldwide. However, Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t the only movie having a good run as the horror film Longlegs has been delivering success of its own.
There’s been a lot of chatter about Deadpool & Wolverine’s box office accomplishments. Not only do audiences get to see the long-awaited comic book team-up of two iconic superheroes, but there are all of those hyped-up surprise cameos to look forward to seeing.
Deadpool & Wolverine was predicted to have a very good box office opening, but we just didn’t know how good. According to Deadline, tracking services predicted three weeks in advance that the new Marvel movie would have an opening of $160-$165 million. The Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman-led film exceeded expectations in having one of Marvel’s biggest opening weekends of $211.4 million in the U.S., breaking records for R-rated film openings and this 2024 movie releases in general. It continued its success for another monster weekend adding $97 million which helped the third Deadpool movie cross the $800 million threshold.
Even though we’ve talked about Deadpool & Wolverine a lot, it’s time to pull our attention towards another surprising box office smash: Longlegs. Box Office Mojo reported that the Neon horror film made over $22.6 million during its opening weekend. This is a real weekend winner for the indie distributor where in its third weekend, Longlegs became the studio’s highest-grossing movie after the success of 2019’s Parasite.
$22.6 million may not seem like a big deal compared to a Marvel movie opening of $211.4 million, but Longlegs still broke even at the box office considering Collider reported its budget was less than $10 million. This means the creepy Nicolas Cage flick exceeded twice the amount of money that Neon invested in it.
With exceptional numbers like these, Longlegs played at 350 more movie theaters its second weekend so more would get a taste of why the horror-thriller left “a mark” on critics. Its marketing strategy was genius in leaving Cage’s serial killer character’s look a secret, piquing the curiosity of audiences more and more. With all of the cloak and dagger behind the twisted character, I’d be curious to what’s behind the curtain.
The impressive box office numbers of Deadpool & Wolverine may be the talk of the town, but Longlegs has been sneaking its way towards spectacular box office numbers of over $22 million. With both films receiving critical praise and stellar casting, audiences seem to have faith they’re investing their money in great movies they’ll remember way long after summer is over. You can contribute to the box office success of both movies playing in theaters now.
