Tom Holland in Spider-Man No Way Home
Sony
Spider-Man: No Way Home did whatever a spider could and just demolished any preconceived notions about how much a major theatrical blockbuster could gross in these pandemic-era times. Sony and Marvel’s $200 million sequel earned a whopping $253 million in its debut weekend. That’s a 2.08x multiplier from its $121.5 million Friday, which is exactly on par with the mid-December debuts of The Force Awakens ($247 million from a $119 million Friday), Rogue One ($155 million/$75 million), The Last Jedi ($220 million/$105 million) and The Rise of Skywalker ($177 million/$90 million). In just a weekend, it’s already the biggest-grossing domestic earner since Rise of Skywalker ($515 million) two years ago. Either this is going to be a metaphorical super-spreader event, or it’ll provide definitive proof that theatrical moviegoing is no more exponentially dangerous than any number of already “back in business” activities.
It’s the fourth-biggest single-market opening weekend ever, behind only Detective Chinatown 3 ($398 million in China), Avengers: Endgame ($356 million) and Avengers: Infinity War ($257 million). Even accounting for inflation, it sits behind only Avengers 4, Avengers 3 and The Force Awakens ($247 million in 2015/$268 million adjusted). It earned more in three days than Black Panther earned ($242 million) in four days while out-grossing Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($225 million) in just a weekend. It out-grossed the long Independence Day weekend debuts of Spider-Man 2 ($180 million Wed-Sun in 2004), Amazing Spider-Man ($137 million Tues-Sun in 2012) and Spider-Man: Far from Home ($185 million Tues-Sun in 2019). So what went right for the Sony/Marvel co-production? Well, to quote everyone’s favorite deleted scene from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, isn’t that the question of the day?
First, obviously, Spider-Man is the most popular comic book superhero in the world. Sure, there are moments when Superman is buzzier, Wonder Woman or Black Panther is defining the cultural zeitgeist or Batman is cooler. Absent of-the-moment topicality, Spider-Man is the favorite. Spider-Man was the first $100 million-plus opener ever, while Spider-Man 3 was the first $150 million debut of all time five years later. Even the maligned Amazing Spider-Man series still earned $760 million in 2012 and $705 million in 2014. They just cost way too much ($235 million and $255 million) and were foolishly pretzeled into being (respectively) Batman Begins and Sony’s own Avengers-style launching pad, at least in terms of how they were marketed. We’ll never know if Amazing Spider-Man 3 might have thrived on a more reasonable $175 million budget, but I digress.
The key to this blow-out weekend, beyond the popularity of Spider-Man and the dominance of the MCU, is multi-generational nostalgia. As we’ve seen with The Force Awakens, Beauty and the Beast and It, you can score huge when you have a property that appeals to multiple generations and was embraced/discovered in different eras by still-active moviegoers. For example, Beauty and the Beast had fans of the 1991 Disney toon and fans of Emma Watson’s Harry Potter films, while It had fans of the Stephen King book and fans of the 1990 ABC miniseries which both were “discovered” by potential moviegoers at different points in their lives. Spider-Man: No Way Home parlayed nostalgia for the Sam Raimi blockbusters and (arguably manufactured?) nostalgia for the Marc Webb reboot films too.
Sony revealed the return of five villains and their original actors from previous Sony Spider-Man franchises, while hiding whether Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield would show up too. Whatever my nitpicks, the film succeeds in being a stand-alone blockbuster adventure (you don’t need to see any of the other MCU or Spider-Man movies to enjoy it) while offering plenty of treats for the hardcore fan base. Moreover, unlike Batman v Superman (which kept taking focus off Clark Kent) and The Rise of Skywalker (which kept throwing out reveals that meant more to the audience than to the characters), Spider-Man: No Way Home mostly works as a Peter Parker passion play for Tom Holland’s iteration of Spidey while also offering a fond farewell to the other incarnations.
“This weekend’s historic Spider-Man: No Way Home results,” so said Sony’s Chairman and CEO Tom Rothman, “from all over the world and in the face of many challenges, reaffirm the unmatched cultural impact that exclusive theatrical films can have when they are made and marketed with vision and resolve. All of us at Sony Pictures, are deeply grateful to the fabulous talent, both in front of and behind the camera, that produced such a landmark film. Thanks to their brilliant work, this Christmas everyone can enjoy the big screen gift of 2021’s mightiest Super Hero —your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”
Like The Fast Saga, Sony turned infamous fumbles (in this case, rebooting the Raimi series, trying to turn Amazing Spider-Man into their own MCU) into a retroactive touchdown. It stinks that we’ve had a deluge of high-quality studio programmers (West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, Last Night in Soho, King Richard, The Last Duel, etc.) dying horrible box office deaths. That’s a pre-Covid problem whereby audiences have chosen streaming for their casual entertainment and only go to theaters for surefire IMAX-worthy tentpoles. But this is still a huge win for movie theaters, as A) a popcorn for Spider-Man 3 version 2.0 costs the same as one for Nightmare Alley and B) theaters were never going to survive Covid if a movie like this couldn’t pack ‘em in.
With solid reviews and an A+ Cinemascore, even legs like Last Jedi or Rise of Skywalker gets Spider-Man 3 version 2.0 between $713 million and $737 million domestic. Anything beyond that, and it’s time for Battle at Lake Changjin ($900 million in China alone) and The Force Awakens ($937 million domestic in 2015) to get a little nervous. A multiplier like Rogue One ($529 million/$155 million) gets No Way Home to $865 million (just below Avengers: Endgame) and a multiplier like The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug ($258 million/$73 million) gets it to $897 million. Yes, I’m assuming conventional Christmas tentpole legs, since, well, there are no examples of big well-received tentpoles opening well in mid-December and crashing. All signs point to Spider-Man: No Way Home soaring to infinity and beyond.
A quick note on global earnings, as the film earned $587 million worldwide, the third-biggest launch ever behind the last two Avengers movies. And that’s without China, where Far from Home earned $199 million in 2019. The question is no longer where No Way Home will be the first pandemic-era $1 billion grosser, but whether it’ll end up closer to Avengers ($1.5 billion) or Avengers: Infinity War ($2.048 billion). The big hope is that, even under current circumstances, that this massive smash hit is the boat that lifts all tides. After all, Matrix: Resurrections and Sing 2 open on Wednesday, and it would be a hell of a Christmas miracle if there was room for more than just the web-slinger at this season’s global box office.
