The R-rated Marvel Studios movie is confirmed for a run at the Chinese box office.
Wade and Logan are making another stop on their world tour: the Middle Kingdom. Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine will open in China as a day-and-date release with the United States on July 26 — and with “minimal” cuts to the Disney-owned studio’s first R-rated movie. (The American Motion Picture Association’s Classification and Rating Administration gave Deadpool & Wolverine the R rating for “strong bloody violence and language throughout, gore and sexual references.”) China’s Film Bureau reportedly approved a simultaneous theatrical release in the territory with limited edits that are “due to violence, blood and gore, and language.”
According to Variety, “no cuts were made that impact the integrity of the storytelling and the film remains authentic to the Deadpool spirit.” While 2016’s Fox-made, R-rated Deadpool didn’t open in China, a version of its R-rated 2018 sequel, Deadpool 2, earned an additional $42.4 million at the China box office after Fox released the PG-13 Once Upon a Deadpool re-edit there in early 2019.
Marvel Studios confirmed Deadpool & Wolverine‘s China release with a poster shared on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
In early 2023, it was announced that Chinese officials had ended the country’s three-year ban on imported Marvel movies. 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever released there in early 2023, followed by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Marvels. The Black Panther sequel was the first Marvel movie to reach China since Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019; Marvel was shut out of the world’s second-largest movie market with 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder.
Director Shawn Levy and stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, who reprise their respective roles as Wade Wilson/Deadpool and Logan/Wolverine, will appear in China to promote the movie on July 2nd. The Chinese release is a boon to Deadpool & Wolverine, which is already tracking for the biggest opening of the year with a projected $200 million-plus opening weekend at the domestic box office. (Those numbers were reported before Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which hit theaters over Father’s Day weekend, shattered expectations with the first $100 million-plus domestic opening since last summer’s Barbie and the second-best animated opening ever.)
Ticket seller Fandango previously reported that Deadpool & Wolverine broke its best first-day ticket sales record for 2024 after advance tickets went on sale May 21st. Theater chain AMC later reported that the Marvel movie racked up the most day-1 ticket sales for any R-rated movie ever, beating Deadpool, Deapdool 2, and Joker.
Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine opens exclusively in U.S. and Chinese theaters on July 26th.
