“Deadpool & Wolverine” reheats its hot streak as the summer box office cools down

The Marvel movie is on track to pass $600 million domestically over Labor Day weekend.

Despite the summer box office cooling down, the Deadpool & Wolverine hot streak is still going strong.

The R-rated Marvel superhero sequel is on track to pass the $600 million mark at the domestic box office, per Comscore, after earning an estimated $15.1 million over the first three days of the Labor Day weekend. Monday’s earning should bring the film’s domestic tally to $603.8 million, with a global total of $1.25 billion.

Led by Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, the third film in the Deadpool saga has broken several box office records since its July 26 release, soaring past the billion-dollar mark in less than a month and claiming the title of highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. As the only Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of 2024 — and the first Deadpool movie since Disney acquired Fox — the quippy comedy may just mark an optimistic new era for the franchise.

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Trailing behind Deadpool 3 is another 20th Century Studios property, as Alien: Romulus added another $9.3 million to its $88.7 million domestic total. The seventh installment in the Alien franchise did even better abroad, where it earned $22.6 million towards its $283 million total.

Set between the events of 1979’s Alien and its 1986 sequel, Aliens, Romulus follows a group of young space colonizers — led by Cailee Spaeny — as they scavenge an abandoned space station in hopes of beginning a better life. Unfortunately, they instead find themselves face-to-face with horrifying, hostile lifeforms.

Elsewhere, the top 3 remains unchanged from last week, with Blake Lively’s It Ends With Us maintaining third place with another $7.4 million towards its $133 million domestic total ($283.7 million global cume).

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As Labor Day isn’t typically known as a lucrative box office weekend, this year also marked few new releases for the final summer weekend. Among them was Dennis Quaid’s turn as the titular former president in Reagan.

The biopic, tracing the story of America's 40th president, follows Ronald Reagan as he transitions from Hollywood fame to the political stage. Based on Paul Kengor's 2006 book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, the film opened to $7.4 million domestically.

Meanwhile, Twisters is still going strong in theaters, despite being available to purchase and rent on streaming. The disaster movie, led by Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick), Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing) and Anthony Ramos (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) scored another $7.1 million and is expected to gross $259 million over the four day weekend. Globally, the film sits at $358 million.

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Besides Reagan, the weekend did mark the arrival of another box office newcomer in the form of Sony’s Afraid, an 84 minute thriller about a family whose AI smart-home device turns against them.

Coming in beneath Blink Twice, The Forge, and Despicable Me 4, the cautionary tale opened to an estimated $3.7 million domestically and picked up another $2.3 million overseas, for a global total of $6 million. The Blumhouse-produced horror flick led by John Cho and Katherine Waterston also stars Bottoms breakout Havana Rose Liu, Shrinking’s Lukita Maxwell, and Late Night with the Devil’s David Dastmalchian

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.