Deadpool & Wolverine reigns as original The Crow director cheers remake's box office failure

After briefly being dethroned by Alien: Romulus, Deadpool & Wolverine returned to the top of the box office this weekend. Earlier this month, the superhero threequel became the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, surpassing another comic book film, Joker. Now Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman extend their reign of terror, raking in a total of $1.21 billion worldwide. It’s the second-highest-grossing movie of the year behind Inside Out ($1.64 billion), which happens to come in at number 10 on the weekend box office.

The box office results are less inspiring further down the list. According to Variety, it’s the third-lowest grossing weekend of the summer, 13.8% behind 2023 and 25.8% behind 2019. The new entries this weekend saw lackluster openings, particularly The Crow, which opened at an uninspiring number eight. (That’s beneath even the latest inspiring Christian drama, The Forge, which came in the number five slot.) The reboot, starring Bill Skarsgård, was “formed from countless vestigial limbs that seem to have sprouted like weeds across its entire 15-year development period, never to be trimmed off or reshaped,” Matthew Jackson wrote in his D review for The A.V. Club. “The results are bleak, unimaginative, and—despite the presence of a couple of bona fide Good Actors—tiresome to watch. It’s a film that can’t help but remind you of the original, if only because you’ll be longing to rewatch that movie instead.”

Alex Proyas, director of the 1994 adaptation—and who has been against the remake for years—was pretty public about his schadenfreude around The Crow‘s weak opening, posting some negative reviews to Facebook and marking himself “Safe From Seeing Crow 2024,” per one meme. “Wow. Box office is a bloodbath,” he posted, later adding, “I thought the remake was a cynical cash-grab. Not much cash to grab it seems.”