After Disney’s Avengers: Infinity War jumpstarted summer three weeks ago before it fell asleep this past weekend, along comes Fox/Marvel’s Deadpool 2 to get moviegoers’ adrenaline pumping again. Fox has been banging the drum on this movie going all the way back to March 2017 when Logan opened with a surprise teaser for the sequel that clocked 25.8M on YouTube, and analysts tell Deadline that the Ryan Reynolds movie is poised to make $305M-$350M worldwide this weekend in a predominant day-and-date splash.

Divided out that’s $130M-$150M stateside (Fox is betting on the lower end of the range, with the industry forecasting higher) and $175M-$200M offshore. Originally Deadpool 2 owned the lucrative most Memorial Day June weekend frame that Wonder Woman launched in a year ago, but after Avengers: Infinity War moved to April, Fox decided to make its moolah sooner by switching its Marvel title to this weekend.

Deadpool opened during the Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day four-day holiday two years ago becoming the top R-rated domestic opener of all-time with $132.4M over 3-days, $152.1M over 4 days. Anything north of the former would set a new record. Overseas the 2016 title had a slightly different release pattern, but in today’s dollars and like-for-like markets, it did $149.9M (that was also at a time when there was minimal competition during the February school holidays in Europe, Asia as well as a boost from the Chinese New Year). Ultimately, Deadpool finaled at an unadjusted $420M overseas and became the highest-grossing R-rated film both internationally and worldwide ($783.1M).

Deadpool 2 has remained on fire since it hit tracking four weeks ago with advance ticket sales out of the gate showing the movie to be Fandango’s best R-rated preseller in the first 24 hours, beating Fifty Shades of Grey. Deadpool 2 screened last night for critics and so far Rotten Tomatoes is showing a score of 85% certified fresh, two points higher than the original’s RT rating. At 4,332 theaters, Deadpool 2 is the widest R-rated release ever for the industry (beating the 4,103 count for New Line’s It) and it’s the widest ever for any 20th Century Fox release, besting DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon 2 at 4,253. That figure just speaks to the hunger and demand for an R-rated pic by exhibition bookers. Previews start at 7PM with some locations playing the double bill of Deadpools.

The sequel is directed by John Wick and Atomic Blonde filmmaker David Leitch and follows the Merc with a mouth as he tries to bring a wild and dangerous young mutant under his wing. Cable complicates events by showing up from the future with plans to kill the young boy.

For more than a year and a half, Fox has continually reminded moviegoers that Deadpool 2 is on its way with Reynolds’ edgy and hysterical stunts, whether it was with the superhero’s parody of Bob Ross’ painting lessons to the actor tirelessly making many appearances abroad. In Italy, Reynolds appeared on the local Dancing With The Stars alongside Josh Brolin; in the UK the pair also did The Graham Norton Show with David Beckham. A YouTube “apology” video posted by Fox and featuring DP and Beckham was seen over 16M times. Deadpool also took over the Manchester United football club in another video published this week.

In Korea, Reynolds appeared on King Of Masked Singer, a popular competition show in which the singer wears a costume and mask, belts out a song and then is revealed. Reynolds appeared in a cape and unicorn mask and performed “Tomorrow” from the Broadway musical Annie.

Preview play starts offshore today, including in the UK which was the biggest market for the first film at a $53.5M cume. Everywhere, Deadpool 2 is coming three weeks after the gargantuan debut of Avengers: Infinity War which is still going — and also boasts Brolin as the baddie. There’s not a ton of runway, however, with Solo: A Star Wars Story and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom hot on the Merc’s heels, he’ll need to be frontloaded. Japan opens on June 1 with China still TBD in regards to a release (the first Deadpool didn’t make it in, and this one will likely meet the same fate). Reynolds and Brolin’s globe-trotting is expected to pay dividends in the individual markets with the wide coverage of his visits. Also look for South East Asia to be muscular. On the previous film, after the UK, the top markets were Australia, France, Russia, Germany, Korea, Brazil, Japan, Mexico and Taiwan.

Paramount Pictures

In the states, reigning B.O. champ Infinity War will ease to second place with around $32M, -48%. Through yesterday, the Russo Brothers pic counts $552.7M.

Paramount has the older-female skewing Book Club starring Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen about a group of ladies whose lives are changed after reading 50 Shades of Grey in their book club. Playing at 2,800 theaters, an opening between $9M-$10M is expected. Previews start at 5PM on Thursday. Last year, Warner Bros. elderly comedy Going in Style opened to $11.9M and did a 3.78x for a final $45M domestic gross.

Global Road

Then there’s the talking animal pic Show Dogs at 3,145 sites which is expected to file in the high single digits. The movie has been developed and co-produced over the last two years, originally by Open Road Films, one of the companies acquired by Tang Media Group in August last year that is now under the Global Road Entertainment umbrella, and Riverstone Pictures. Pic follows Max, a macho, solitary Rottweiler police dog who is ordered to go undercover as a primped show dog in a prestigious Dog Show, along with his human partner, to avert a disaster from happening. Will Arnett, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, Natasha Lyonne, Jordin Sparks, Gabriel Iglesias, Shaquille O’Neal, Alan Cumming, and Stanley Tucci star.