Ryan Reynolds & Blake Lively Just Broke A 34-Year Box Office Record Together

You know the old saying: Couples who star in two extremely hyped-up movies at roughly the same time together (despite technically being rivals at the box office) tend to stay together. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have always been one of the internet's favorite celebrity pairings and, this past week, the dream team's romance has found itself in the spotlight like never before — and that's not even factoring in Lively's own cameo as, spoiler alert, the voice of Lady Deadpool. The overlapping releases between Reynolds' "Deadpool & Wolverine" and Lively's "It Ends With Us" played out like a rising tide raising both ships, buoyed by their respective audiences turning out in droves and pitting both films against one another in a battle for that prized #1 spot.

But that competition only exists in the minds of financial experts, film journalists, and internet stans who are way too invested in their pop-culture idols. In reality, this happy quirk of scheduling meant that both husband and wife have actually broken a box-office record that's stood for nearly three and a half decades. Thanks to "Deadpool & Wolverine" and "It Ends With Us" both debuting at the top of the domestic box office, it appears that this is now the first time a married couple have done so since another pair of star-crossed A-listers, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, experienced much the same phenomenon back in 1990. That's the power of love, people!

Rarely before has the phrase "Power couple" felt so apt. While the rest of us were using this past weekend to catch up on sleep, marathon the "Alien" movies to prepare for Fede Álvarez's "Alien: Romulus," and watch Tom Cruise take over the Olympics with another death-defying stunt on live TV, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were busy doing something that was actually productive — and, to state the obvious, wildly lucrative. In their usual weekend wrap-up prognosticating all the various outcomes at the box office, Deadline crunched the numbers and reported that the combined performance of "Deadpool & Wolverine" and the romantic drama "It Ends With Us" has resulted in one of the more fun pop-culture narratives in quite some time. Citing an unnamed "rival exec" (don't worry, we did our own digging and this appears to be true), the outlet notes that:

"[...] This is the first time since 1990 that husband-and-wife superstars had back-to-back theatrical releases that boosted each other's, the last being Bruce Willis with 'Die Hard 2' and Demi Moore with 'Ghost.'"

Granted, this is awfully specific criteria to define a box office record, but what else are math-illiterate people like myself supposed to do, besides twist the numbers and run with much more entertaining pieces of trivia? The actual quality of both movies might remain somewhat up for debate (/Film's review by Chris Evangelista called "Deadpool & Wolverine" a "disappointing cameo fest" while BJ Colangelo pointed out the myriad of well-meaning shortcomings in "It Ends With Us" in her review for /Film), but at least we can all agree there's something heartwarming and endearing about a success story like this.

Both "Deadpool & Wolverine" and "It Ends With Us" are now playing in theaters.