Colleen Hoover’s popular novel It Ends With Us has made a powerful leap from bookshelves to the big screen, earning impressive box office numbers. The film adaptation, featuring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni (who also took on directing duties), has amassed an impressive $50 million from 3,611 theaters across North America during its first weekend. The movie also brought in $30 million internationally, giving it a strong global debut of $80 million. This marks a significant achievement for the film, which was co-financed by Sony Pictures and Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios with a budget of $25 million.
The movie tells the emotional story of Lily Bloom (played by Lively), a small business owner who becomes embroiled in a complex love triangle involving Ryle (Baldoni), a charismatic yet abusive neurosurgeon, and Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), her first love. Despite mixed critical reception, audiences have shown overwhelming support, awarding the PG-13 romance an “A-” rating on CinemaScore.
Despite its strong showing, It Ends With Us was narrowly outpaced by Deadpool & Wolverine, which added $54.2 million from 4,330 theaters in its third weekend. This marks a rare occurrence in August, a typically slower month for cinema, where two films have grossed $50 million or more in the same weekend. It also marks the first time in over three decades that a married couple topped the box office charts with their respective films—Blake Lively with It Ends With Us and her husband Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine. The last time this happened was in 1990 when Bruce Willis’s Die Hard 2 and Demi Moore’s Ghost claimed the top two spots.
Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at Comscore, attributed this success to the momentum from July: “The momentum that July provided carried over into August, but the key factor this weekend was the perfect timing of It Ends With Us following Deadpool & Wolverine, creating this unusual and welcome result for August.”
Deadpool & Wolverine has held the top spot at the box office for three consecutive weekends, with its domestic earnings now reaching $494.3 million and its global total surpassing $1.029 billion. In the coming days, the film is expected to surpass 2019’s Joker ($1.07 billion) to become the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.
On the other hand, Lionsgate’s video game adaptation Borderlands, starring Cate Blanchett, struggled significantly, earning only $8.8 million from 3,125 theaters, placing it fourth behind Twisters, which earned $15.4 million in its fourth weekend. Twisters has now reached $222 million domestically and $310 million worldwide.
Borderlands fared even worse internationally, bringing in just $7.7 million, for a disappointing global total of $16.5 million. Despite the fact that nearly 60% of its production costs were covered by international presales, the film’s poor performance is far below already modest expectations. With a production budget of around $115 million, plus $30 million in marketing and distribution expenses, Borderlands is shaping up to be a significant box office flop. The movie, directed by Eli Roth, follows Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past who returns to her home planet, Pandora, and forms an unlikely alliance to locate the missing daughter of Atlas. The cast also includes Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, and Jamie Lee Curtis
