The Success Of 'Deadpool' Isn't About Its R-Rating (And Why Hollywood Might Fail In Replicating A Phenomenon)

“Man, with Comic-Con buzz like that,” I tweeted back in July after Fox’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con, “‘Deadpool' could end up being at least as successful as ‘Dredd.’” Clearly, I was wrong. Very wrong. The Ryan Reynolds-starring superhero movie has reached an unprecedented level of box office success. It took about five minutes to lap the worldwide gross of “Dredd,” and after just two weekends in theaters, “Deadpool” is the sixth most successful R-rated movie of all time and has domestically out-grossed every other film in the “X-Men” series. 

“Deadpool” is the first huge box-office hit of the year. Surely, rival studios are envious and will produce plenty of imitations. Opinions vary as to exactly why the film caught fire in the way that it has, but one of the more popular is that the film’s R-rating, a rarity for the genre, proved to be a selling point. And the impact —which includes the #Deadpooleffect hashtag...