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Michael Lynderey: Now, who didn't see this coming? Be honest. As soon as I heard they were making a Deadpool movie, especially one starring Ryan Reynolds, I thought to myself: "Okay, $150 million for a four-day weekend is a gimme for starters, but how high can it go beyond that?" In fact, for years now, when people have asked me what movie I thought could beat Avatar's total box office record, I would usually answer "whatever James Cameron does next, obviously, then probably a new Star Wars movie, oh, and, I almost forgot, Deadpool". Oh, is it going to be rated R? Well, then I'm low-balling it. A February release date, wedged in between Star Wars and Batman v. Superman? Then I'm definitely underpredicting. So I'm actually really disappointed that the opening wasn't a bit closer to $230 million or $250 million, which I think is where most reasonable people would have guessed it.

Deadpool is such a wildly popular and recognizable character - he's had the biggest-selling comic book series for 25 years (even people who hate comic books usually check out a Deadpool issue or two a year); three consecutive hit television shows that just wouldn't get off the air because people kept watching no matter how bad they got; and I see kids dressed as Deadpool for Halloween all the time, much more so than any other comic book character, by far - that I'm not sure what took so long for them to actually get a movie out there. Just making a Deadpool movie is practically a license to print money - lots and lots of it. And while the studio is presumably disappointed it didn't break the weekend record, as it by all rights should have, I'm sure they're still somewhat pleased.

Ben Gruchow: What intrigues me most about an opening of this size is the implications for the future of the non-Marvel Studios Marvel movie. If Deadpool had done this same number with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 25% and a weekend multiplier of 2.0, I think this conversation would have a different tone; we'd be talking about another instance where a studio needs to give the rights back to Marvel so they can do it correctly, as we saw with Fant4Stic last August. Instead, the movie is just about as good as an in-house Marvel Studios film, better in certain areas, and it just opened larger than any non-Avengers/non-Downey Jr. (consarn you, Iron Man 3!) Marvel film.

It's a pointed kiss-off to the idea that another studio bearing a Marvel license can't equal the in-house studio at their own game, and that's a good thing; intricacies of a gigantic singular over-arcing narrative aside, I like seeing different interpretations of a comic-book ethos. Nothing about Deadpool suggested to me that it wasn't incredibly stage-managed by Fox in the same way that the in-house Marvel movies are stage-managed by Disney, but it's still a different sensibility at work (more self-referential, more focused on the nature of mutant powers...both things it shares with the X-Men movies). For what it's worth, I think this opens the door for smaller, niche, "outsider" Marvel products. Not Blade, because Marvel got the rights back, and not the Punisher, because Marvel got the rights back, and not Daredevil, because Marvel got the rights back, and...so, yeah. I look forward to another Fantastic Four reboot in four years.

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