Weekend Box Office: Alien: Romulus bursts free of the competition

The reign of the Lively/Reynolds power couple at the U.S. box office has finally been broken, by that most natural of impediments to success: Wet, slimy space monsters bursting out of everybody’s chests.

This is per Deadline, reporting on this weekend’s box office, which will see Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus open at number one in the domestic totals, with an expected weekend take of $40 to $42 million during its opening round in theaters. That’s enough to put it comfortably ahead of its family-led competitors, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool & Wolverine and Blake Lively’s It Ends With Us. Deadpool is expected to edge out the win between the two, bringing in $27 million, while also becoming the most successful R-rated movie of all time—having just surpassed Joker for the honor. (Also, this means Disney has both the number 1 and number 2 spots at the box office; how 2019!) It Ends With Us, meanwhile, will bring in $24 million domestic this weekend, wildly good money for a romantic drama that only cost $25 million to make in the first place.

Next up is… Did you expect us to say Borderlands, now in only its second week in theaters? Then you, friend, have not been paying sufficient attention to Borderlands discourse: Eli Roth’s video game adaptation actually slipped to ninth place at the domestic box office this weekend, coming in behind, in order: *big breath* Alien: Romulus, Deadpool & Wolverine, It Ends With Us, Twisters, the Coraline re-release, Despicable Me 4, Trap, and Inside Out 2. That is so many extremely old movies to come in behind on only your second weekend of life, but dang if Borderlands didn’t manage it, bringing in a measly $2.2 million at the domestic box office. If it doesn’t end up being the biggest flop of the year, it will only be through extreme efforts on someone else’s part.