As a general rule, Hollywood studios tend to avoid the dreaded R rating with their big tentpole movies, because it restricts which audiences can see it. If a movie is rated PG-13, 13-year-olds and their elders can enjoy it. But if it’s rated R, every ticket-holding viewer needs to be over 17 years old (or accompanied by a very cool parent or guardian), so the studios miss out on a large chunk of the moviegoing population, especially during the lucrative summer box office window. But that doesn’t mean R-rated movies can’t bust blocks. Some of the highest-grossing movies ever made have been rated R.
In 1973, the R-rated supernatural chiller The Exorcist grossed $329,017,945. In 1990, the raunchy romcom Pretty Woman broke its record with a gross of $463,406,268. A year later, the groundbreaking effects and explosive action sequences of Terminator 2: Judgment Day earned a whopping $520,884,847. T2 held that record for over a decade before 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded broke it with a $741,847,937 gross. The Matrix sequel retained this record for slightly longer than T2 before being topped by Deadpool’s gross of $782,612,155 in 2016. Two years later, Deadpool 2 broke its own franchise’s record by about $4 million with a global box office haul of $786,470,484.
Deadpool 3 Being The MCU's Only R-Rated Movie Is A Good Thing
After the Merc with a Mouth broke his own box office record, it seemed like Deadpool had become the king of R-rated box office returns, and that the history of highest-grossing R-rated movies would just become a series of Deadpool movies topping each other’s worldwide figures every couple of years. And then, in 2019, Todd Phillips’ Joker came along and blew both Deadpool movies out of the box office water with an
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