Weekend Box Office: Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds dance on Borderlands' early grave

It’s turning out to be a shockingly good weekend for the Lively-Reynolds family at the box office, as married duo Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds have now logged the two highest-grossing movies of the weekend. (That’s It Ends With Us and Deadpool & Wolverine, in case you weren’t keeping up with this summer’s theatrical output.) And, in fact, there’s a decent shot that the number one spot will end up going to Lively’s Colleen Hoover adaptation, the first movie of the summer to have any chance of knocking the Marvel film off its top spot after two weeks of box office domination. (To be fair, Lively is actually in both movies, although her role, which includes producing, in It Ends With Us is a hell of a lot more significant than her brief, faceless cameo in Deadpool.)

The romantic drama, about a woman (Lively) who finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage with her former dream guy (Justin Baldoni, who also directed) is way out-performing expectations, and is now likely to make at least $45 million domestic over the weekend. (Off of a measly $25 million budget.) Despite some rumors circulating about behind-the-scenes tensions between Baldoni and Lively—the calculations of who’s following who on Instagram have been ruthlessly charted, and he gave an interview this weekend saying maybe Lively should just direct the sequel, which you can take a couple of different ways—the film itself is thriving. Co-starring Jenny Slate and Brandon Sklenar, it’s rocking a very high A- CinemaScore, and is reportedly doing very well with a female audience that’s been underserved by this dude-heavy blockbuster summer.

Speaking of: Deadpool & Wolverine is still doing more than fine for itself, and may actually edge out It Ends With Us by scoring $50 million in its third weekend in theaters. (It’s also probably going to cross the $1 billion worldwide mark this weekend, becoming only the second movie of 2024 to do so.) Reynolds, for his part, is clearly enjoying and participating in his wife’s success, having penned dialogue that appears in It Ends With Us, and thrown his typically fun/exhausting brand of energy at the movie’s promotion.

And then there’s Borderlands! You probably did not need us to tell you this, but Eli Roth’s PG-13 adaptation of the M-rated video games has, in technical terms, shit itself at the box office, and will struggle to crack the $10 million domestic mark. (Not good, when your movie cost $115 million and three years of a lot of people’s lives to make.) It’ll achieve third place this weekend roughly by default, and only because Twisters and Despicable Me 4 are at the very tail ends of their runs. Panned by critics, ignored by audiences, and even shunned by some of the hardcore faithful of its video game source material, it’s probably too early to declare it the summer’s biggest bomb, but, hey: Ships in harbor are safe, but that’s not what ships are for, right?