A still from Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”
Sony
Spider-Man returns to the big screen this weekend, earning an estimated $120.5 million at the domestic box office.
sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”, the highly anticipated sequel to the Academy Award-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, had the second biggest opening of 2023, just behind of universal “Super Mario Bros. Movie”.
The film has the third best opening weekend for any Spider-Man film, animated or live-action.
“As a PG animated film, ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ is able to capture a younger audience beyond the core fans of live action PG-13 films thus ensuring the long-term cross-generational appeal of the character and films.” comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said.”It’s money in the bank for studios and movie theaters.”
“Across the Spider-Verse” estimated more than 9 million moviegoers over the weekend, according to figures from Entelligence. The data firm reported that tickets for the film represent about 56% of all foot traffic to theaters from Thursday to Sunday.
Additionally, 29% of patrons who saw the film in a premium format paid an average of $4.52 more per ticket.
“This debut is further proof that audiences are eager for fresh, edgy visuals for both superhero and animated films,” said Sean Robbins, principal analyst at Boxoffice.com.
Sony’s animated Spider-Man sequel follows with several strong box office openings, including disney and Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3” and Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”.
With ticket sales of $10.2 million during its fifth weekend in theaters, “Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3” has grossed approximately $322.7 million domestically. The film grossed $780.1 million globally.
“The Little Mermaid” saw a 58% drop in ticket sales from its first weekend to its second weekend, adding $40.6 million to its cumulative global profit, on par with the industry average. The film has grossed $186.2 million in domestic ticket sales and $326.7 million globally.
Additionally, Disney’s “The Boogeyman” opened to $12 million in domestic ticket sales and Universal’s “Fast X” added $9.24 million in ticket sales over the weekend, bringing its domestic sales to $128.4 million.
According to comScore data, the domestic box office tally currently stands at around $3.6 billion, down just 21.9% from post-pandemic levels. So far this year, the 2023 box office is up 27.9% from the same period in 2022.
“Between the big opening of Spidey, the strong take of ‘The Little Mermaid’, the terrifying offering of ‘Boogeyman’, the holdover potential of ‘Guardians’ and ‘Fast X’ and much more to come, theater owners, studios and audiences are now in full force Moving on to the most exciting summer market in four years, Robbins said.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal distributed “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Fast X”.