Disney and Marvel Studios' Deadpool and Wolverine's six-week tracking from The Quorum shows a $200 million to $239 million projection, Deadline exclusively reported.

Even better? The service, which monitors how films will do six weeks ahead of the release, said that this is a conservative estimate.

This is important because there has never been an R-rated film that had a weekend opening which earned $200 million. If the Ryan Reynolds-Hugh Jackman pairing for this threequel clears that figure, that's one for the record books. And it may yet happen with Fandango reporting a few weeks ago that it broke the record of the highest advanced ticket sales for an R-rated film. Another record it has broken? It's the first R-rated film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The record-breaking Deadpool & Wolverine

Deadpool & Wolverine poster, box office and money emojis

Currently, the highest domestic weekend opening gross R-rated movie is the original Deadpool which earned $132.4 million in February 2016. If the threequel posts lower than the conservative estimate at $150 million when it premieres July 26 and then going into the weekend, it would still be bigger than the original movie as well as Jackman's 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand. If it hits that figure, it's only $5 million short of the year-to-date's biggest weekend opener, Disney/Pixar's Inside Out 2.

The Quorom tracks films through four metrics: Awareness (what percent of the audience is aware that the film exists), Interest (what percent of the audience is interested in seeing the film), Theater (what percent of the audience will go to watch the movies in theaters instead of streaming at home) and Fee (what percent of the audience will pay to go see the movie).

Deadpool & Wolverine scored the high across all four categories among the 14 films about to be released in the next eight weeks: 61% for Awareness and Theater, 66% for Interest and 73% for Fee. Despicable Me 4 beat the film at 65% for awareness, but it was the highest in the rest of the three categories. According to Quorom, out of all the movie set to be released this summer, the Deadpool film has the highest PLF (premium large format) score at 28%. This means the audience prefers to watch the movie in actual cinemas.

The entertainment website also said that the tracking service stated that Deadpool & Wolverine's high numbers come from men, higher compared to 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home six weeks before it was released. The Marvel movie has the second-highest domestic opening ever, earning $260.1 million. And with the anticipation of the film, whose last franchise installment was in 2018, two years before the pandemic upended everything we knew, the projections could still climb higher.

R-rated movies by the number

Going back to the “conservative” estimates of the film at $200 million at the lowest and $239 at the highest, that's $100 million more than the highest-grossing opener of an R-rated film. To date, only three R-rated films have cracked the $100 million figure, two of those are Deadpool movies (number one, Deadpool, and number two, its sequel) and the third is 2017's It at $123.4 million.

It's also important to note that of the top 10 R-rated films with the highest opener, none are released AFTER 2020. Number four on the list is 2019's Joker at $96.2 million. The second installment to The Matrix franchise released in 2003, The Matrix Reloaded is at number five, which earned $91.8 million. Number six is the sequel to number three, It Chapter Two, at $91.1 million. In seventh place is Jackman's supposedly last turn as Wolverine, 2017's Logan, at $88.4 million. Number eight is the 2011 sequel The Hangover Part II at $85.9 million. Number nine is the 2015 romance drama Fifty Shades of Grey. Rounding out the list is Mel Gibson's faith-based 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ at $83.8 million.

Since then, there have been two distinct upheavals: the COVID-19 pandemic and the dual strikes last year. If Deadpool & Wolverine does crack the $200-million opener mark, it's the most positive sign yet that the movies are indeed back in cinemas. And so is the audience.