The adventures of Peter Parker once again draw audiences in droves. With historical recipes, the new episode of the adventures of Spider-Man, No Way Home, brought a breath of fresh air to the film industry, which relied heavily on the superhero to revive a box office left bloodless by the Covid-19 pandemic.
With $ 253 million in revenue over the weekend, Spider-Man, once again played by Tom Holland, had the third best release in North America history, according to provisional estimates published this Sunday by the specialist firm Exhibitor Relations. In France, the film recorded 476,494 admissions from day one, the best start of the year.
This is much more than the forecasts of the specialists, who counted on 150 million dollars. It’s also the best studio release ever. Sony, according to the site Deadline. The new blockbuster is on track to reach 600 million internationally, ruled Exhibitor Relations.
Sony is the last major traditional Hollywood studio not to have its own video-on-demand platform and the success of Spiderman seems all the more spectacular. “It’s an extraordinary outing”, estimated the expert David A. Gross, of the specialized firm Franchise Entertainment Research, cited by the review Variety. “While most big movie series struggle to keep up, Spider-Man is blowing up.”, he added.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is exceeded in its record only by Avengers: Endgame ($ 357 million) and Avengers: Infinity War ($ 258 million) in the annals of the best releases in the United States and Canada, according to the specialist site Box Office Mojo.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is the third film in which the hugely popular Spider-Man is played by British actor Tom Holland. The previous episodes, where the red and blue suit was worn by Tobey Maguire then Andrew Garfield, had also broken the house at the box office. the Spiderman original, in 2002, was the first film in cinema history to exceed $ 100 million in revenue for its first weekend of exploitation.
For this new opus, the story picks up where it left off Far From Home in 2019, with a Spiderman whose real identity, Peter Parker, is publicly revealed by the villain Mysterio. The high school student is desperately trying to return to anonymity with the help of another Marvel character, the Doctor Strange, camped by the no less popular Benedict Cumberbatch.
With these record breaking receipts, the superhero signs the biggest success for a movie since the release of the last episode of Star wars in December 2019. That was before the Coronavirus, and no film has surpassed the $ 100 million mark for release.
While US cinemas have recovered somewhat this year despite theater closures and restrictions (forecasts point to a doubling of revenues compared to 2020), the industry still has a long way to go to recover, especially with the rise. in potency of the Omicron variant, which worries more and more.
Spiderman leaves its competitors far behind. Encanto, from Disney, an animated tale with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, placed second over the Friday-Sunday period, grossing $ 6.3 million, according to Exhibitor Relations.
Films aimed at older viewers often flopped, such as the remake of West Side Story by Steven Spielberg released last weekend. This Romeo and Juliet New Yorker raked in $ 3.4 million this weekend taking the codes, music and history first brought to the stage on Broadway in 1957, grossing less than $ 18 million in two weeks.
In fourth position, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the newest chapter in the paranormal franchise, grossed $ 3.4 million. It is followed by the thriller Nightmare alley by Guillermo del Toro (just 3 million, despite rave reviews), and House of Gucci (1.9 million).
Even the superheroes Marvel, whose latest films blithely exceeded $ 1 billion in admissions, have stalled. The Eternals had thus collected only $ 70 million for their first weekend in theaters, a poor performance for this subsidiary of Disney.