Deadpool & Wolverine is on its way to topping $1 billion this weekend, not only climbing Marvel’s charts as one of the highest-grossing MCU releases, but also the R-rated box office charts to challenge Joker for the all-time crown. So this is a good moment to look at the history of R-rated superhero movies.
Joaquin Phoenix stars in “Joker.”
Before we dig down into the numbers and talk about Deadpool & Wolverine’s place on the box office charts and how it stacks up with other R-rated comic book films, let’s take a look at the top 10 highest grossing R-rated movies of all time…
- Joker (2019, $1.078 billion)
- Deadpool & Wolverine (2024, $1+ billion)
- Oppenheimer (2023, $977 million)
- Deadpool 2 (2018, $785.8 million)
- Deadpool (2016, $782.6 million)
- The Matrix Reloaded (2003, $741.8 million)
- It (2017, $700 million)
- Detective Chinatown 3 (2021, $686 million)
- Logan (2017, $619 million)
- The Passion of the Christ (2004, $612 million)
After this weekend, Deadpool & Wolverine should need just under/over $50 million in ticket sales to pass Joker for the crown as highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. Joker surprised with its $1.078 billion gross back in pre-Covid 2019.
Looking at the chart, notice the Deadpool franchise has three of the top five spots on the R-rated box office charts, with Deadpool & Wolverine sitting at #2 until it moves up to first place, Deadpool 2 at #4 with $785.8 million in 2018, and the original Deadpool at #5 with it’s 2016 gross of $282.6 million.
And with Logan sitting at #9 on the R-rated charts, that means the X-Men movie franchise now has four of the top 10 highest-grossing R-rated films in cinema history. How’s that for a wild stat?
Notice, too, that including Joker, half of the top-10 grossing R-rated movies are superhero films. This reflects the overall fact superhero cinema has been largely dominant at the box office in the modern era, but superhero movies — and comic book movies more broadly — have been popular R-rated fare for a long time.
Early R-rated comic/superhero films were rare, but The Crow in 1994 made a huge splash. It earned a solid $98 million off a $23 million budget, and generated tremendous interest and buzz. Besides offering such a different approach from typical costumed heroes in all-ages releases of the 1970s and 1980s, the shocking death of lead star Brandon Lee during filming — due to an accident in which a prop gun accidentally fired a projectile — created additional interest in Lee’s final performance.
In 1998 and 2002, the R-rated Blade and Blade II did $131 million and $155 million, respectively, and helped keep the entire superhero cinematic genre alive (with eventual additional help from the X-Men) til heavy hitters like Spider-Man arrived to turn the genre into box office gold once again. Conversely, the first Hellboy movie in 2004 was rated R, but it flopped with just $50 million, despite being awesome and receiving positive critical reviews and fan love.
For a while, the R-rated comic book adaptations turned to non-superhero stories and found both critical and box office success. Road to Perdition with $181 million in 2002, Sin City at $158.7 million in 2005, A History of Violence taking $61 million also in 2005, V for Vendetta’s $134.6 million in 2005, and 300 with a whopping $456 million in 2006.
Mark Millar has been behind a collection of more modern R-rated superhero and comic book adaptations to film, often with filmmaker Matthew Vaughn. Their The Kingsman franchise — 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, 2017’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and 2021’s The King’s Man — has grossed more than $950 million worldwide with its trilogy of films.
Also based on Millar’s work, the low budget 2010 Kick-Ass (also directed by Vaughn) and its sequel Kick-Ass 2 in 2013 combined for $153 million, while Wanted scored $342 million off a modest $75 million budget. And of course, the blockbuster X-Men movie spinoff sequel Logan from 2017 was based on Millar’s Old Man Logan comic miniseries, and it grossed $619 million.
All told, the R-rated films based on Millar’s work top a whopping $2 billion.
But then things get more complicated, because aside from the high-grossing exceptions already discussed, there have been as many failed R-rated superhero movies as successes over the past 15 or more years.
Consider: The Punisher: War Zone scored a paltry $10 million in 2008, and despite being a masterpiece Watchmen came up short with just $185.5 million in 2009. Dredd, while earning a cult following and terrific reviews (because it’s great) in 2012, managed just $41 million. Even among Millar’s mostly successful releases, a couple — Kick-Ass 2 and The King’s Man — both disappointed during the time frame we’re talking about here.
The Covid era didn’t do much to help. The DCEU’s Birds of Prey underperformed at $205 million in 2020, while that same year Fox’s attempt to spin off and soft-reboot their X-Men series failed miserably when The New Mutants took just $49 million.
And while not necessarily awful for a film that released on home streaming at the same time it hit theaters, The Suicide Squad’s $168.7 million in 2021 was still ultimately another disappointment in the R-rated superhero category, despite how wildly entertaining and fantastic it truly is.
We can look at the Deadpool trilogy, the Joker film (and probably its sequel Joker: Folie à Deux this October, which could also top $1 billion and might challenge Deadpool & Wolverine for the R-rated box office crown), Logan, and a few others as the standard setters for true blockbuster R-rated superhero cinema, but it’s important to remember there is also plenty that failed, and quality or star power or even brand/franchise recognition doesn’t always matter.
With the same three characters — Deadpool, Joker, and Wolverine — soon to represent six of the top 10 R-rated releases at a level no other R-rated superhero fare comes close to, I think there’s a crucial lesson that audiences really only seem interested in or widely accepting of such adult-only behavior from certain specific characters.
Which is fine and probably a good thing, actually, since too often fans who came to love these characters and comics as children have tended to expect everything to grow up with them. Part of this is probably self-consciousness about being an adult fan of something society too often treats as “kid stuff” (although that’s far less true nowadays, as “geek culture” has simply become “culture” since it’s so mainstream now), as much as tastes and sensibilities changing.
But PG-13 offers plenty of room for all of the action violence, profanity, and even brief nudity anyone should need in 99% of superhero movies. The X-Men films regularly featured Wolverine stabbing the heck out of everybody, Ice-Man getting beheaded, at least one or two “f-bombs” being dropped in dialogue, partial nudity or full from-behind nudity, as well as intense emotional and social themes for grown-up viewers. And I will go to my grave insisting Once Upon a Deadpool is basically tied with Deadpool & Wolverine as the best of the franchise.
So while I’m happy that R-rated films exist in the genre, and feel there are certain characters and films that benefit more from an R-rating than without it, I also think most of the time PG-13 is plenty, and helps keep the genre open and welcoming for fans of all ages.
