Ticket sales of Ryan Reynolds' superhero sequel Deadpool 2 are so brisk on Fandango that the film is on pace to become the top R-rated film in presales in the online ticket merchant's 18-year history. The first Deadpool movie, of course, was a worldwide blockbuster, having earned more than $783 million worldwide in 2016. Of that gigantic total, Deadpool's domestic box office tally was $363 million, making it at the time only the third R-rated film in movie history to eclipse the $300 million mark stateside, preceded by The Passion of the Christ ($370.7 million) in 2004 and American Sniper ($350.1 million) in 2014.

Only one other R-rated film has crossed $300 million domestically since that time (IT earned $327.4 million in 2017), and by all indications, Deadpool 2 is going to give that nearly impossible benchmark a serious run when the film hits theaters next month.

According to Variety, Deadpool 2 is on pace to top previous Fandango record-holder Fifty Shades of Grey for the biggest pre-sales of an R-rated films. The news Friday comes only one day after Deadpool 2 tickets went on sale to the public, where the film quickly became the third-biggest preseller of 2018 behind Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther. Apart from the fact that Deadpool 2 released its final trailer Thursday, Fandango managing editor Erik Davis believes a cool bonus item helped attract moviegoers to purchase their tickets in advance on the site. He says:

“Thanks in part to ‘Deadpool’ creator Rob Liefeld’s exclusive FanShop poster offer with tickets, fans flocked to Fandango to reserve their seats as soon as tickets were available.”

The announcement of Deadpool 2's blistering pre-sales on Fandango comes a day after Regal Cinemas said the film broke the theater chain's record for ticket pre-sales. Considering that the largest chain in the country, AMC, and the third-largest, Cinemark Theatres (Regal is the second-largest in the U.S.) have yet to report pre-sale numbers, all indications are already pointing to Deadpool 2 becoming a major summer movie season blockbuster.

The pre-sale reports are certainly more encouraging than what was suggested in Deadpool 2's early tracking numbers released in late March, which indicated the film was primed to make $100 million in its opening weekend – $32 million less than its predecessor opened with. Early tracking numbers also suggested that Deadpool 2 was eyeing a final domestic gross of $242 million, which is considerably less than the stateside total of the original.

With Deadpool 2 primed to exceed expectations when it opens in theaters in less than a month, theater owners and studios will no doubt be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Since the summer of 2017 marked the lowest domestic tally since 2006 (thanks to bombs like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, The Mummy and Transformers: The Last Knight), the important four-month moviegoing frame this year looks to be off to an encouraging start thanks to the massive interest in Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2 (with Solo: A Star Wars StoryThe Incredibles 2 and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom waiting in the wings). Better yet, if Deadpool 2 performs as well as the ticket pre-sales suggest, then it greatly increases the chances of a third big-screen adventure with the Merc with a Mouth.

NEXT: Final Deadpool 2 Trailer Reveals Most Important Member Of The X-Force

Source: Variety

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