Well, well, well … who would have thought Deadpool would be this record-breakingly successful? Ryan Reynolds, maybe, since he fought to get this thing off the ground for years. 20th Century Fox probably not so much, since it took all those years to convince it to gamble on the project.
But it's clearly paid off for them both, as Deadpool had the biggest R-rated movie opening ever when it premiered in February (and the biggest February opening ever). And now it has one more record to its name: highest-grossing R-rated movie in world box office history, after surpassing The Matrix Reloaded's $742.1 million take. Deadpool is currently at about $745 million and still climbing.
Of course, this comes with caveats: tickets were cheaper when The Matrix Reloaded was released in 2003 and inflation has happened in the intervening 13 years. And Deadpool might be the highest-grossing R-rated movie worldwide, but it's actually third in North America, according to Entertainment Weekly … for now. With $349.4 million here, it should soon overtake American Sniper ($350.1 million).
And if Deadpool sells $21.5 million more worth of tickets on these shores, it'll pass another R-rated movie that was one actor's passion project and revolves around a character who is exceedingly difficult to kill: Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which tops the North American R-rated box office charts with $370.8 million.