Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds Gives Joker an R-Rated Congratulations on Its Box Office Performance

Ryan Reynolds has dropped what is maybe the first F-bomb ever used in an a public congratulations over box office receipts. The message, appropriately enough, is to congratulate Joker on taking its place among the highest-grossing R-rated movies of all time. In the image, seen below, Reynolds used the Joker poster as a forum to congatulate “you mother f*cker,” along with a list of lead characters from other R-rated box office smashes from Deadpool and Ted to The Matrix and The Passion of the Christ. Reynolds himself noted the irreverence, saying, “R-Rated box office congratulatory posts aren’t like the ones you’re used to.”

While these kinds of congratulatory gags used to be the domain of industry trade periodicals that everyday fans didn’t see much of, the age of social media has made them a regular event — and the constant breaking and re-breaking of box office records has made them increasingly more common.

A small budget and outsized box office take will make Todd Phillips’s Joker one of the most successful films of the year, earning as much in profit as Marvel Studios’s Avengers: Infinity War, according to projections published yesterday.

The journey to huge box office success has been pretty seamless for Joker, which earned a huge opening weekend and has remained a force at the box office, putting up solid numbers even while movies like Zombieland: Double Tap and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil hit theaters and suck up a lot of the oxygen in the room.

Joker has made $250 million at the domestic box office. It’s made over $700 million worldwide and has a shot at becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. It is already Warner Bros.’s biggest release of 2019.

Joker is a grounded, R-rated origin story for Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Joker. Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, who descends into madness and emerges as the clown-faced killer known as the Joker. The film also stars Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Bill Camp, Shea Whigham, and Marc Maron.

Joker is in theaters now. Upcoming DC Films movies include Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) on February 7, 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5, 2020, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.