The latest entry to the ever-popular Spider-Man series, Spider-Man: No Way Home, was always going to be a mega hit at the box office as part of a beloved superhero franchise starring the beloved Tom Holland. Now that the movie is past its important opening weekend, it's starting to emerge just how big of a hit it's been: it now boasts the accolade of second-biggest opening weekend of all time.
The Jon Watts-directed Spider-Man: Way Home is the third solo MCU film for Tom Holland's Peter Parker and finds Peter desparate to recover the anonymity he lost at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, turning to Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange for help. The plot deals with the chaos that ensues from dabbling in the multiverse, bringing back many fan-favorite Spider-Man characters of past movies. It has been an incredibly buzzy film, in part due to its numerous pandemic-induced delays building up a healthy amount of anticipation that even resulted in the ticket release for Spider-Man: No Way Home pretty much crashing the internet.
Sony has now made it official: Spider-Man: No Way Home has the second highest opening ever at the domestic box office, reporting $260 million. 2018's Avengers: Infinity War came just shy of this with $257.698 million. The international box office has also brought in huge amounts for Spider-Man: No Way Home, with $340.8 million acheived abroad, all adding up to an incredible global debut total of $600.8 million. The weekend for No Way Home was very much frontloaded, as Marvel movies often are, earning $121.925 million on Friday, $73.9 million on Saturday, and $64.175 on Sunday.
No other Spider-Man movie has had a bigger opening, nor has any other Sony movie nor, for that matter, has any movie in December full stop. The only movie currently ahead of it in terms of box office openings is 2019's Avengers: Endgame, which Jon Watts compared No Way Home to, proving Marvel's dominance in theaters is here to stay. It should also be taken into account how impressive these figures are in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a profound effect on the box office as a whole, with the overall revenue for the domestic box office this year markedly down from the highs of 2019. With this in mind, No Way Home's beating of 2018's Infinity War, which had a debut blissfully unimpeded by the pandemic, is even more impressive.
It remains to be seen if the film can continue this homerun in the weeks to come, as the viewing figures for superhero movies tend to wind down after die-hard fans rush out to see them when they first open. What's more, the new Omicron variant is rapidly rising and becoming a cause of concern for movie-goers and box office analysts as a result. While the holiday season has always been a profitable time for movies, the relentlessness of COVID could curb that.
Either way, the figures are spectacular and exceeded original expectations for Spider-Man: No Way Home's opening weekend, and are definitely a cause of hope for the health of suffering movie theaters. Despite the ditractors of the superhero blockbuster genre, they are vital at the moment for theaters to be able to thrive.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently showing in theaters.
Source: Deadline