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Sony’s ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is doing even bigger business than expected at the Friday box office for a projected weekend debut of $220 million or more, based on matinee returns. If those estimates hold, the superhero pic would secure one of the top four openings of all time at the domestic box office, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
The film blew the doors off the box office, earning a massive $50 million in Thursday previews. The Sony Pictures release is on pace to pull in between $150 million to $180 million over its opening weekend, setting a new high-water mark for blockbusters during the Covid era.
The film scored the third-biggest preview gross of all time, behind ‘Avengers: Endgame’ ($60 million) and ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ ($57 million), a remarkable feat considering the ongoing pandemic and concerns over the omicron variant. To date, omicron doesn’t appear to be impacting the North American box office to any large degree.
The same can’t be said of certain overseas markets and, particularly, some countries in Europe. Yet even internationally, ‘No Way Home’ is finding its way, grossing north of $100 million in its first two days and setting records in many territories.
Other records the new Spider-Man movie has already broken: It scored the second-biggest superhero preview gross behind ‘Avengers: Endgame’ ($60 million) and is Sony’s biggest preview number ever. In terms of the Spidey franchise, it tripled Spider-Man: Homecoming‘s preview earnings of $15.4 million.
‘No Way Home’, reuniting director Jon Watts and star Tom Holland, is from Sony’s Columbia Pictures, which controls the film rights to Spider-Man, and Disney’s Marvel Studios, home to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ combines three generations of Spider-Man movies and includes previous villain actors Willem Dafoe (2002’s Spider-Man), Alfred Molina (2004’s Spider-Man 2) and Jamie Foxx (2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2). It also stars Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau and Benedict Wong.
