Blake Lively’s It Ends With Us Beats Deadpool at Friday’s Box Office

It’s a happy morning in Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ house no matter how you slice and dice it, with separate films of the couple providing their own Barbenheimer movement.

The new female-powered Sony It ends with uswith and produced by Lively, won the championship title Deadpool and Wolverine Friday with a record $24 million in revenue, including $11 million in previews. Marvel Studios and Disney’s dead Pool The film — from Reynolds and director Shawn Levy — grossed $15.7 million on its third Friday.

Most predict that dead Pool will take the lead on Saturday and remain at the top of the domestic chart for its third consecutive weekend with $50 million to $56 million, as it crosses the $1 billion mark worldwide.

Opening weekend estimates for It ends with us Lively’s earnings vary wildly, ranging from $47 million to $50 million. Sources close to Sony are talking about $45 million to $49 million, a sensational number that would mark Lively’s biggest opening in a leading role.

Regardless, the combination of these films is a big win for the August box office, with overall domestic grosses expected to increase 35% from the same weekend last year, and more remarkably, 19% from 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

The film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel was on track to gross $23 million at the box office, even though exhibitors were expecting a $40 million gross based on advance sales. The film’s performance, bolstered by an A-CinemaScore and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, underscores the strong demand for a film aimed at women.

Ticket buyers so far for It ends with us 84% of the channel’s members are women, spread across all adult age groups; 60% are between 18 and 34, while 33% are 35 and over. It also has the notable advantage of appealing to an ethnically diverse audience.

It ends with us Actress Lively stars as Lily Bloom, a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and fulfill her lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance encounter with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) sparks an intense connection, but as they 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 reappears in 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 about her future.

This is the first Hoover novel to be adapted for the big screen. The film is directed by Baldoni and cost a modest $25 million to produce before it was released commercially.

Some have billed the two Reynolds-Lively films as a showdown, but it’s quite the opposite, according to insiders. Reynolds, a marketing expert, and Lively hoped that these two very different films would culminate in a Barbenheimer moment where both films would become stars…