By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --In the Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively box-office showdown, both husband and wife came out winners.
Reynolds’ Marvel Studios smash “Deadpool & Wolverine” remained the top movie in North American theaters for the third straight week with $54.2 million in ticket sales according to studio estimates Sunday. Worldwide, it’s now surpassed $1 billion. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” though, was closely followed by “It Ends With Us,” the romance drama starring Lively, which surpassed expectations with a stellar $50 million debut.
Together, the films created a kind of family edition of “Barbenheimer,” in which a pair of very different movies thrived in part due to counterprogramming. Only this time, the opposite movies were fronted by one of Hollywood’s most famous couples. The films’ one-two punch wasn’t entirely unprecedented. In 1990, Bruce Willis’ “Die Hard 2” led the box office while Demi Moore’s “Ghost” came in second.
The weekend also featured a high-priced flop. “Borderlands,” the long-delayed $120-million videogame adaptation directed by Eli Roth, launched with a paltry $8.8 million for Lionsgate. The film, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black, was shot all the way back in 2021. After delays and reshoots, it finally landed in theaters effectively dead-on-arrival; it scored just 10% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and seems likely contend for one of the worst movies of the year.
Meanwhile, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which co-stars Hugh Jackman, continued its march through box-office records. The film, directed by Shawn Levy, is only the second R-rated movie to reach $1 billion, following 2019’s “Joker.” In three weeks, it’s already one of the most lucrative Marvel releases and trails only Disney’s other 2024 smash, “Inside Out” ($1.6 billion worldwide) among movies released this year.
Lively makes a cameo in “Deadpool & Wolverine” but she both stars in and produced “It Ends With Us.” Adapted from the bestselling romance novel by Colleen Hoover, Lively stars as Lily Bloom, a Boston florist torn between two men, one from her present life (Justin Baldoni, who also directed the film) and another who was her first love (Brandon Sklenar).
“It Ends With Us” cost a modest $25 million to produce, so it will turn a significant profit for co-financers Columbia Pictures and Wayfarer Studios. Like another female-skewing summer-release book adaptation from Sony, “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “It Ends With Us” could hold well through the typically slower August box-office period. Audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore.
Reynolds and Lively occasionally played up the convergence of their movies. Earlier this week, Reynolds posted a video of himself posing junket questions to Sklenar. The timing paid off especially for Lively, whose film doubled earlier opening-weekend forecasts.
Neon’s “Cuckoo,” a German Alps-set horror film by filmmaker Tilman Singer, opened with $3 million on 1,503 screen. It stars Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” $54.2 million.
2. “It Ends With Us,” $50 million.
3. “Twisters,” $15 million.
4. “Borderlands,” $8.8 million.
5. “Despicable Me 4,” $8 million.
6. “Trap,” $6.7 million.
7. “Inside Out 2,” $5 million.
8. “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” $3.1 million.
9. “Cuckoo,” $3 million.
10. “Longlegs,” $2 million.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More