The film had an unprecedented marketing campaign for an R-rated film.
A new analysis by The Hollywood Reporter from Deadpool and Wolverine‘s unprecedented four-quadrant marketing campaign saw the superhero blockbuster raise more money from brand partnerships than most other MCU titles.
Through its partnerships with a variety of brands – from Audi to Heinz to NatGeo –Deadpool and Wolverine received an incredible $135 million from brand partnerships.
According to DeadlineThis would put Shawn Levy’s multiverse spectacle in fourth place on the list of Marvel’s most expensive advertising campaigns. As expected, the top spot goes to Avengers: Endgamewhose advertising campaign was worth around 200 million dollars. In second place is Avengers: Infinity War (150 million US dollars), followed by Spider-Man: Homecoming (US$140 million).
Deadpool and Wolverineis particularly noteworthy because the first two Dead Pool Movies have had few brand partnerships outside of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Ryan Reynolds said THR that it was easy to find partners for the latest installment once they had agreed on the tone they wanted to use to market the extremely vulgar, extremely violent, R-rated film.
“For me, the biggest challenge was to avoid the more R-rated marketing instincts of Deadpool,” Reynolds said of his character. “The marketing had to be aimed at all audiences and not target a specific comedy, action or superhero genre,” he explained. “The choice of collaborations sent a message about how broad we wanted to go – Heinz, Dave & Buster’s, NatGeo, TCM and Bachelorette– but also the way we wrote it was playful, but not superficial.”
Reynolds admitted that “we didn’t get everyone on our list of preferred sponsors,” “but we got enough and then others came along that we didn’t expect,” he said. “That’s unusual for an R-rated film, but we always aimed for four quadrants of coverage – even if the film wasn’t exactly ‘safe.'”
Deadpool and Wolverine continues to break financial records of all kinds. Last week it surpassed joker and became the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time.
