COVID-schmovid: Sony and Marvel’s new Spider-Man: No Way Home scored the third-biggest domestic opening of all time, taking in an estimated $253 million in its massive North American weekend opening.
Box office watchers are spinning hopeful predictions, with analysts eyeing it as the pandemic era’s first potential billion-dollar-grossing film.
Its box office sales trail only 2019’s Avengers: Endgame ($357 million) and the previous year’s Avengers: Infinity War ($258 million), according to the BoxOfficeMojo website.
Spider-Man easily surpassed early estimates of $130-150 million. The new superhero blockbuster is well on its way to earning $600 million overseas, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday. And this comes as theaters continue to battle their way back from months-long Covid-induced closures.
“This is an incredible opening,” David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, told AFP. While most big series struggle to keep their momentum, he added, “’Spider-Man’ is exploding.”
Analysts, however, are warning that the industry’s recovery still has a long way to go, especially amid fears of a new surge in coronavirus cases fueled by the Omicron variant.
The latest Spider-Man installment is British star Tom Holland’s third solo outing in the wildly popular role, played in earlier films by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
The webslinger has form when it comes to big openings. The original film starring Maguire in 2002 was the first movie in the history of cinema to gross more than $100 million on its debut weekend.