While Oscar aficionados prepare for tonight’s celebration of white people winning gold statues, moviegoers chose to spend the weekend watching Ryan Reynolds wear leather and kill people while making snarky comments. Deadpool kept killing it at the box office, wrangling another $31.5 million out of viewers, bringing its domestic cume to $285.6 million in three weeks. Its massive success at the box office may end up profoundly affecting the future of R-rated movies. Meanwhile, Gods of Egypt, a movie so white it may sweep at next year’s Oscars, proved to be less than Godly, earning a very mortal $14 million during its opening weekend. Already being called one of the year’s biggest flops, it had a budget of $140 million, and is not expected to perform very well overseas, particularly in Egypt, where the movie’s expunging of actual Egyptians in a story purportedly about Egyptians was not well-received. Lionsgate will likely cancel its plans to turn the film into the next big action-epic franchise. Puny Gods.
Kung Fu Panda kept on kung-fu-panda-ing, chopping up another $9 million, for a domestic cume of $128.4 million, while Risen ($7 million) just edged out Eddie the Eagle ($6.3 million). Triple 9 made two-thirds of $9 million, while The Witch earned $5 million in its second week. Its $16.6 million cume is now an almost-evil 16.6-times larger than its budget.