A Guide to Every Dragon in House of the Dragon

This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon through season 2 episode 7 and George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood. The family feud at the center of House of the Dragon has gone from throne-room squabbling to outright conflicts, with assassins skulking down dark alleys and dragons engaging in open combat. The only thing […]

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Superhero fatigue, meet Deadpool. Deadpool, please “Careless Whisper” superhero fatigue out the door. Yep, it’s easy to opine this morning that Marvel Studios is back in a big way following one of the best opening weekends in the studio’s 16-year history. As of press time, Deadpool & Wolverine is estimated to have earned an eye-watering $211 million in its first three days at the North American box office. That’s easily a franchise best for Deadpool, Wolverine, and the greater X-Men saga, as well as the highest opening weekend for any R-rated movie. Ever. In fact, only five movies have grossed more in their domestic debuts than Deadpool & Wolverine, crossing that hallowed $200 million threshold, and three of them are also Marvel Studios joints… although, perhaps tellingly, the only other one to mark this milestone in the decade after Avengers: Endgame is Spider-Man: No Way Home.

When coupled with a global rollout of an estimated $443 million, Deadpool & Wolverine appears well on track to outpace the impressive grosses of its predecessors, with Deadpool having earned $783 million in 2016, and Deadpool 2 accumulating $786 million in 2018. Whether Deadpool & Wolverine has a shot at becoming the highest grossing R-rated movie of all-time remains to be seen (right now Joker and Oppenheimer are the two biggest “adult” movies on the block, with $1.08 billion and $975 million, respectively).

However, the fact Deadpool & Wolverine earned a sterling “A” CinemaScore from polled audiences is a good indication it has a shot via enthusiastic word of mouth. For context, Deadpool had a nearly 6x multiplier atop its then-record shattering $132 million opening. So if Deadpool & Wolverine can similarly leg out, it will definitely cross $1 billion worldwide.

This is obviously champagne-corking news for Marvel Studios, who seems poised to turn a corner between this box office hit and their headline-grabbing SDCC panel over the weekend. It is also a chance to recalibrate the media narrative for their core genre after a couple of relatively brutal years (although nothing nearly as bad as what the distinguished competition across the street has just gone through).

Last year was in fact a nadir for the MCU. While Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 did respectable business and earned $846 million worldwide, that number was down from Vol. 2’s $864 million cume from over half a decade earlier. That movie was also seen as another swan song for the MCU’s 2010s glory days. Conversely, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels’ bleak box office runs fed into the seemingly demonstrable phenomenon of “superhero fatigue” when juxtaposed with WB/DC’s outright disastrous 2023.

Well, if 2023 is a nadir, then Deadpool & Wolverine shows a likely path forward for sunnier days in the MCU. The film is again playing better than any non-Spidey Marvel movie released in this decade. By contrast, the now-third highest MCU opening of the 2020s is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which grossed an impressive $187 million in its first three days. However, that film was also divisive among fans for the way it subverted expectations, and its “B+” CinemaScore foreshadowed what turned out to be a steep 67 percent drop in its second weekend, and a box office run that failed to reach $1 billion despite that massiv