Theatrical movie giants AMC Theatres, Cinemark and Imax were all cheers on Monday after Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine opened to a record-shattering $205 million at the domestic box office on the weekend.
AMC said it set new 2024 records for weekend attendance and admissions revenue in the U.S. market and for its Odeon Cinemas locations worldwide as over 6 million moviegoers passed through its theaters Thursday through Sunday.
“It is certainly good news for those who care about AMC that with Deadpool & Wolverine we enjoyed the highest ever attendance and highest ever admissions revenue for the opening weekend of a rated-R movie in AMC’s company history,” AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron said on Monday. AMC also said the July 26-28 weekend saw its highest food and beverage revenue in the U.S. since 2019.
Shares in AMC Theatres opened up 5 cents, or 1 percent, at $5.23 on Monday amid continuing questions over the company’s high debt load and its ability to ride out the pandemic and the impact of the disruption in the Hollywood movie calendar due to the dual actors and writers strikes last year.
Premium format screens contributed 18 percent of the gross for Deadpool & Wolverine, which returns Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool and brings Hugh Jackman into the franchise as Logan/Wolverine. Imax posted $36.5 million in ticket sales, a July and R-rated record for the movie technologies company.
“Deadpool & Wolverine delivered one of the biggest Imax opening weekends of all time, continuing our hot start to the third quarter and furthering our momentum ahead of a fantastic slate over the next several years,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond said in a statement. His company’s share price rose by 53 cents, or nearly 3 percent, to $20.62 at the market open on Monday.
Deadpool & Wolverine is the first R-rated movie released by Disney and has exhibitors looking forward to more franchise releases from Kevin Feige’s Disney-owned Marvel studio.
“We are thrilled to share that Deadpool & Wolverine drove Cinemark’s biggest summer opening weekend of all time, generated record-breaking results in premium formats, and delivered our highest weekend of concession revenues since the pandemic,” Sean Gamble, Cinemark president and CEO, said in his own statement.
Deadpool & Wolverine also enabled Cinemark’s biggest opening weekends ever for Cinemark XD, the private-label premium large format, and for the company’s theaters with D-BOX motion seats. Cinemark stock rose 50 cents, or just over 2 percent, to $22.43 in early morning trading.
The big weekend opening for Deadpool & Wolverine comes as exhibition giants continue to deal with the impact of last year’s Hollywood strikes and a lingering pandemic on theater attendance. Major cinema chains have faced a crisis of confidence after theater shutdowns during the height of the pandemic and after last year’s Los Angeles writers and actors strikes disrupted their movie supply.