‘Across the Spider-Verse’ spins silver screen gold

‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’, Sony’s newest chapter in the webslinger series, soared to North American box office domination in its weekend debut, Sunday estimates showed, cementing the resilience of one of Hollywood’s biggest superhero juggernauts.

The animated offering featuring the voices of Shameik Moore, Haille Steinfeld and Issa Rae netted a cool $120 million domestically for the Friday-through-Sunday period, and another $88 million internationally, according to industry watcher Exhibitor Relations.

“This is an exceptionally good opening for an animation follow-up sequel,” said analyst David A. Gross, adding the sequel has an ‘entirely fresh’ look and is an example of “inspired commercial filmmaking.”

The film picks up the story of half-Black, half-Latino Miles Morales, using an eye-popping blend of decades-old 2D comic book drawing techniques with the latest computer-generated visual effects.

Spidey dethroned Disney’s live-action version of ‘The Little Mermaid’, which raked in a similar amount in its debut the previous weekend and followed up with $40.6 million.