Deadpool & Wolverine makes R14.8 million in South Africa on opening weekend

Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine broke records in its opening weekend in South Africa, bringing in over R14.8 million.

This huge turnover made the 24 July release the biggest opening weekend in South Africa in 2024 so far.

Prior to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, Inside Out 2 was the biggest film of 2024 at the South African Box Office, also becoming the highest-grossing animated film of all time.

Deadpool & Wolverine was also hugely successful in other parts of Africa, becoming the biggest opening weekend of the year in West Africa and the biggest opening weekend since the Covid-19 pandemic in East Africa.

The film also performed exceptionally well globally, making an estimated R8 billion in its opening weekend and breaking the record for the biggest opening of an R-rated film.

In South Africa, Deadpool & Wolverine is rated 16 with warnings for drug use, strong language, prejudice or negative stereotyping, and violence.

Shawn Levy directed Deadpool & Wolverine, which stars Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Supporting roles include Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, and Matthew Macfadyen.

This is a major boost for the South African cinema industry, which has struggled to attract the turnout it once did before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Wider rollouts of fibre-to-the-home and the availability of video streaming services have also weighed on local cinemas.

In addition, load-shedding deterred customers from going to the movies, as not all cineplexes have backup power.

“Last year, despite miraculous periods of no load-shedding, we probably had the most intense period of load-shedding between April and September of last year, and that impacts consumer behaviour,” Ster-Kenikor CEO Mark Sardi told 702.

“If you got onto the drug of watching a streaming service at home, and you’re worried about travelling through traffic lights that don’t work, to a cinema that may, or may not be on, it does become a bit of a disincentive to go,” he added.

The Writer’s Guild of America strike also hit the film industry in 2023, halting the production of multiple films.

“The impact of the strikes was to halt production of movies and create a twelve to eighteen-month delay in releasing titles originally scheduled for release in 2024,” Sardi said.

While these issues negatively impacted the moviegoing public, players like Ster-Kinekor still attract a sizeable audience.

According to The Market Research Foundation’s MAPS data overview for 2021 to 2023, roughly 619,000 South Africans regularly visit a movie theatre once or twice every two or three months.

It noted that cinema penetration in South Africa is low at just 2%. It split the results into six categories as follows:

• Very frequently (at least two monthly visits): 7% of respondents.
• Frequently (at least once a month): 16% of respondents.
• Regularly (once every two to three months): 27% of respondents.
• Occasionally (once every four to six months): 17% of respondents.
• Less often: 21% of respondents.
• Seldom (around once per year): 11% of respondents.

One million respondents visit Ster-Kinekor most often, while 818,000 prefer Nu Metro. Smaller cinema chains, Movies@ and Cinecentre, are favoured by 207,000 and 90,000 respondents, respectively.

The report suggests that pricing is also a major factor, preventing consumers from frequenting cinemas, as the average price per outing was R433.69.