UPDATE: 2025-07-27 08:12 EST BY BRENNAN KLEIN

It Ends With Us Closes The Gap Between Itself And Deadpool & Wolverine, But Stays At No. 2

This article was originally written Saturday AM and has been updated Sunday AM with altered box office projections (in bold), a full chart, and further analysis.

Summary

Deadpool & Wolverinecontinues its box office reign despite fearsome competitorIt Ends with Usentering the ring alongside the sputteringBorderlands. TheDeadpool & Wolverinebox officeis already one of the year’s biggest stories as the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie opened with the biggest R-rated debut ever and quickly climbed past $900 million. In its second weekend, it easily batted down the thrillerTrap, and its latest new release opponents areIt Ends with Us, based on the controversial Colleen Hoover romance novel of the same name, andBorderlands, an Eli Roth-helmed adaptation of the popular video game.

PerDeadline, as of Sunday morning,Deadpool & Wolverineis projected to maintain its position at No. 1by the end of its third weekend at the domestic box office with a 3-day total of$54.6 million. However,It Ends with Usis putting up fierce competition for second place, with projections placing it at$50 millionby the end of the weekend. Meanwhile,Borderlandstrails far behind at$8.8 million, and while sources say its roughly $120 million budget has largely been covered by international licensing, this is a slow start.

Deadpool & Wolverine Is Leading A Surprisingly Unpredictable August Weekend

It Ends With Us Woke Up A Sleepy Summer Box Office Period

It is perhaps no surprise that theDeadpool & Wolverinereleaseheld its No. 1 streak for another week, considering the fact that the MCU tentpole is in the middle of a record-breaking run that sees it rushing toward the billion-dollar mark worldwide. However,the competition between the new releases resulted in some major surprises on the Top 5 chart, shaking it up in the middle of its late summer doldrums. See the weekend’s updated domestic chart below:

1

$54.2 million

~$494 million (weekend 3)

2

$50 million

$50 million (weekend 1)

3

$15.4 million

$222 million (weekend 4)

4

$8.8 million

$8.8 million (weekend 1)

5

$8.75 million

$330.8 million (weekend 6)

With two well-heeled new releases attached to relatively well-known IPs joining the fray this weekend, the expectation for a typical quiet August weekend with a holdover Marvel tentpole would have been for one to take No. 2 and one to take No. 3. This is whyIt Ends with Us' releasehaving such a powerful debut whileBorderlandscratered so hard may feel especially unusual. However,Twistershas been a runaway smash, as hasDespicable Me 4(though not necessarily at the level of previous movies in the franchise), soBorderlandswas up against especially fierce competitionthis weekend.

All of this motion on the Top 5 meant that two titles that charted last week have now exited the chart. The M. Night Shyamalan thrillerTrap, which debuted at No. 3 last weekend, has now dropped to No. 6 with a 3-day total of $6.7 million. Meanwhile,the billion-dollar smashInside Out 2has fallen from No. 5to No. 7 with a healthy $5.2 million.

Why Is It Ends With Us Connecting With Domestic Audiences While Borderlands Is Not?

Many Factors Have Gone Into It Ends With Us’ Success

Going into the second weekend in August, itmight have seemed like the video game adaptation would have been the new release to beat. It is a blockbuster tentpole with a huge budget of roughly $120 million and a notable director in Eli Roth. That is not to mention the stackedBorderlandscastthat includes Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis, who is a recent Oscar winner for the smash hitEverything Everywhere All At Once.

Eli Roth is known for directing such horror movies asHostel,Thanksgiving, andThe Green Inferno, as well as non-horror offeringsDeath Wish(2018) andThe House with a Clock in Its Walls.

On the other hand, romance has had an uncertain box office track record recently.It Ends with Ushas been plagued with controversyfor its divisive depiction of domestic abuse and rumors of behind-the-scenes drama, and it comes with just one major A-list lead in Blake Lively. However, there are several factors that likely helped the romance movie triumph over the video game adaptation at the domestic box office. One of these is the fact thatBorderlandshas earned a dismal 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes score of 10% compared to the romance movie’s more mixed 58%.

It Ends With Us: Why Colleen Hoover’s 2016 Book Is So Controversial

Colleen Hoover’s romance novel It Ends With Us has become very popular among readers, but it has garnered a significant amount of controversy as well.

It Ends with Usmay have also been boosted by the controversy and drama surrounding its release rather than hindered by it, with the attention garnered by the discourse raising its profile when combined with the fact thatit is based on a novel that became a BookTok sensationin recent years. It is also possible that theBorderlandscast, however stacked, may not have been perfectly designed to appeal to the core demographic of the game’s fanbase in the way that Lively may have appealed to fans of the book.

The fact that this isBlake Lively’s first lead role in four yearsand that she just made a cameo appearance inDeadpool & Wolverineopposite her husband Ryan Reynolds likely also helped draw more eyes toIt Ends with Us, helping it trumpBorderlandsat every turn. However, it seems that, in a vacuum, the video game adaptation would have similarly underperformed. It remains to be seen if theBorderlandsbox officecan slowly rise to make it a sleeper hit in North America, but its D+ CinemaScore shows that there is a low likelihood of that happening.

Deadpool & Wolverine

Cast

A follow-up to the highly successful Deadpool and Deadpool 2 films starring Ryan Reynolds as the Merc with a Mouth. The third film will be the first in the franchise to be developed under the Marvel Studios banner following Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.

It Ends With Us

Based on Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel, It Ends With Us is a drama-romance film directed by Justin Baldoni. The film follows a recent college graduate named Lily, who meets a man named Ryle and falls in love with him. However, a traumatic incident compounded with her former high-school sweetheart re-entering her life complicates her plans.

Borderlands

Based on the video game franchise, Borderlands is a sci-fi action-comedy film that follows Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a treasure hunter who returns to her home planet, Pandora, to find a tycoon’s missing daughter. Together with a group of unlikely allies, such as a soldier, a teenaged demolitions expert, a wise-cracking robot, and an eccentric scientist, the group will work together to save the girl - all while learning to deal with each other’s unyielding quirks.