Listen to the article
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman kicked off the celebrations at the giant Comic-Con pop culture gathering on Thursday, July 25, with a special screening of Deadpool & Wolverine, their eagerly anticipated superhero mash-up movie expected to break box office records this weekend.
The Hollywood A-listers Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman took the stage before 6,000 screaming fans, many dressed as spandex-clad heroes and villains, who had won a lottery to attend the hot-ticket opening night event in San Diego, California. Deadpool & Wolverine unites two wildly popular characters from the Marvel superhero movies: Ryan Reynolds’ potty-mouthed Deadpool teams up with Hugh Jackman’s grizzled Wolverine from the X-Men series.
The film is widely expected to be one of the year’s highest-grossing. “A Deadpool and Wolverine movie is quite literally something that I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for,” said Ryan Reynolds before introducing a surprise screening of the entire movie. Hugh Jackman added, “We’ve been around the world with this movie, but the icing on the cake is right here, right now.”
Photo Credit: Valerie Macon / AFP
Opening in theaters globally this weekend, Deadpool & Wolverine is expected to shatter the box office record for movies with an R rating; films that children cannot attend without an adult. Ryan Reynolds’ anti-hero frequently “breaks the fourth wall” by speaking directly to audiences, cracking sexually explicit jokes, and sarcastically mocking the Marvel franchise and its studio, Disney.
The film could gross as much as $200 million in North American theaters on its opening weekend alone, according to trade magazine Variety. The current record for R-rated films is held by the original Deadpool, which made $132 million in its first weekend in 2016, also after getting a Comic-Con preview. “I remember making that movie for you,” Ryan Reynolds told the die-hard superhero fans who make the pilgrimage each year to San Diego. “And I remember how gratifying it was that everyone else liked it too.”
Comic-Con, one of the world’s largest pop culture events, began five decades ago as a humble comic book-themed gathering in a hotel basement. Today it draws A-list stars. On Thursday, Chris Hemsworth attended a panel for the animated prequel Transformers One, while director Roland Emmerich promoted his racy new Ancient Rome-set drama Those About To Die. This is a stark contrast to last year’s edition, where Hollywood strikes prevented actors from attending, quelling fan interest.
This year, Comic-Con is expected to draw 135,000 attendees back to the southern Californian city. Disney will host a hugely anticipated Marvel presentation on Saturday, expected to unveil wider plans to reboot its mega-grossing superhero films after recent high-profile missteps.
This week, crowds will also get a look at Alien: Romulus, the latest in the long-running sci-fi saga launched by Ridley Scott with 1979’s Alien. Disney’s rival studio Warner will offer a glimpse at its Batman spinoff TV series The Penguin, starring Colin Farrell. Amazon’s Prime Video will lift the lid on the second season of its Lord of the Rings television series, which aims to improve on the mixed reviews for its hugely expensive debut season two years ago.
Comic-Con runs until Sunday.
With AFP
