Box office analysists are predicting the four-day, opening weekend of Deadpool to be in the region of $55-60 million.
For a comic-book movie based on a character most people would never have heard of, that's a startlingly high number. Tied in that fact, according to the certification board, it features "Very strong violence. Strong sex references and nudity", which means it isn't your usual family-friendly superhero movie means that spend happy kids and teenagers won't be along for the ride.
So in world already drowning in superhero movies - Deadpool is the first of seven comic book movies coming out in 2016 - how is that this dark horse is standing out so successfully from the maddening crowd?
First appearing as a villian in a 1991 comic-book, Deadpool first appeared as a anti-hero - and then a straight-up villain - in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Previously to that however, New Line Cinema attempted to make a Deadpool movie with Ryan Reynolds in the title role, directed by David S. Goyer, who had previously directed Reynolds in Blade: Trinity.
When Goyer dropped out of the project, New Line also released the rights, which were promptly snapped up by 20th Century Fox, who tied Deadpool into their Wolverine spin-off. When that movie became a massive box office hit, they sent the Deadpool script to Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) to direct.
When Rodriguez turned it down, it was passed on to music video director Adam Berg, and then in 2011, on to visual effects specialist Tim Miller. in 2012, Miller and Reynolds shot a test-real of footage, and after over two years of production hell, the footage was leaked online in July 2014.
The overwhelmingly positive reaction to footage spurned on an announcement by Fox, with an official release date for the movie set at February 2016.
In October 2014, producer Simon Kinberg (X-Men: First Class, Days Of Future Past) announced that there are plans to fold Deadpool back into the X-Men universe, and principal photography for the movie took place between March 23rd and May 29th 2015.
Due to arrive in Irish cinemas on February 10th, here's hoping that the fans do come out in their droves. We've been in this situation before - 2012's very violent, cult-loved, based-on-a-comic Dredd didn't even make it's $45 million budget back - but hopefully, in light of Deadpool's potential success, we'll open up the potential to more adult-skewed blockbusters.
