by Conan Simmons – December 20, 2021 – 7:10 am
Everyone knew ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ was going to be number one at the box office with the most optimistic analysts putting it as high as $150 million in its debut. As the world panics over the latest variation of the Covid-19 virus, this time called Omicron, theatergoers put fear aside and swarmed into theaters across the country.
Making Thursday a sort of official/unofficial opening day the latest team up between Disney’s Marvel and Sony took in an easy $50 million before Friday began. By Friday night ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ had shot past $120 million with two more full days to go for the weekend. The film eventually raked in $253 million for the weekend.
Since the global pandemic started no movie has broken the $100 million mark on opening weekend. The closest was Sony’s Spider-verse tie-in ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’ and Marvel’s ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’. The Venom flick took in $90 million and the Shang-Chi adventure $94.6 over the four-day Labor Day holiday. As ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ basically opened Thursday at $50 million, it’s only fair to count ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ as comparison. All other outlets seem to conveniently forget this fact, perhaps because it doesn’t star a Caucasian superhero?
The film benefitted from Hollywood’s worst kept secret this year. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ includes important tie-ins to previous non-Marvel Studios Spider-Man films by featuring many of the villains from those films and, as everyone knew even though the studio marketing did their best not to verify, the previous Spider-Men.
Reprising their roles are Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin from 2002’s ‘Spider-Man’, Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus from 2004’s ‘Spider-Man 2’ and Thomas Haden Church as Sandman from 2007’s ‘Spider-Man 3’. From 2012’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ comes Rhys Ifans as The Lizard and from 2014’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ Jamie Foxx as Electro.
What ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ does that no film has done before is bring back actors who previously played a title role and have them all play the role again alongside each other. When ‘The Avengers’ released in 2012 there was much hoopla surrounding characters from different movies appearing together even though true film fans knew that kind of thing had been done before from Toho’s Godzilla pictures to the Universal horror films of the 1940’s. However, no film prior to this latest outing of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man had multiple actors playing the same character at the same time. That’s groundbreaking.
Andrew Garfield returns as Peter Parker/Spider-Man from ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ films he starred in just as Tobey Maguire returns as Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the original trilogy directed by Sam Raimi. Also returning from the Sam Raimi trilogy is J.K. Simmons as loud-mouthed Spider-Man critic J. Jonah Jameson, a role revealed at the end of 2019’s ‘Spider-Man: Far from Home’ which was the last time Tom Holland’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man appeared on the big screen. And it wouldn’t be the Marvel Cinematic Universe without other characters appearing, this time Doctor Strange is pivotal to the plot. Doctor Strange continues to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch and director Sam Raimi returns to the superhero genre to direct the next MCU installment, ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ which is also said to feature Raimi collaborator Bruce Campbell.
‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is now the third largest debut ever with its $253 million cache. This is just behind ‘Avengers: Endgame’ at $357 million in 2019 and ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ at $257 million in 2018. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ also swung far past the opening weekend takes of Tom Holland’s other web slinging adventures as 2017’s ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ debuted at $117 million and the sequel ‘Spider-Man: Far from Home’ debuted at $92.6 million.
So, how did the rest of the Weekend Box Office Top 5 do?
The animated family film ‘Encanto’, now in its fourth week was a distant second place with $6.5 million. That’s a gap of $246.5 million from ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ which made 3,792% more. As readers of On Genre know animated movies have a lot of staying power at the box office so don’t expect ‘Encanto’ to drop away this year.
Steven Spielberg’s remake of ‘West Side Story’ fell from the top spot as expected. Proving box office pundits wrong the film dropped 68% in its sophomore weekend. That is on the high side for sophomore drops but not outside the realm of On Genre‘s expectations as we made clear last week.
The musical just barely edged out fan favorite sequel ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ which came in fourth place with $3.4 million.
And it was a nightmare weekend for Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Nightmare Alley’. The remake of 1947’s Tyrone Power starring film noir, this time starring Bradley Cooper, flopped hard at the box office with a mere $3 million. I really thought this film would come in ahead of ‘West Side Story’, clearly, I was wrong. At least I’m not among those other critics who claim audiences don’t like musicals. Seriously, who doesn’t like a good tune?
‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is going to be number one for the foreseeable future. Christmas weekend is next up and the releases of ‘The Matrix: Resurrections’ (a day-and-date release), ‘The King’s Man’ and ‘Licorice Pizza’ (which expands from its current limited showings) will in no way jeopardize Spider-Man from bringing home the bacon.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5
- ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ – $253 million – fantasy (debut)
- ‘Encanto’ – $6.5 million – animated (drop $3.5 million, 35% down)
- ‘West Side Story’ – $3.4 million – musical (drop $7.2 million, 68% down)
- ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ – $3.4 million – fantasy (drop $3.7 million, 52% down)
- ‘Nightmare Alley’ – $3 million – film noir (debut)
Total for weekend box office is $269.3 million. This is an increase of 672% for a gain of $234.4 million over last weekend’s total of $34.9 million.
Disney and Sony are the only two studios to control all five films. The two studios worked together for ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’, under Disney’s Marvel banner. ‘Encanto’, ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Nightmare Alley’ are also owned by Disney with Spielberg’s musical under the Twentieth Century banner and Del Toro’s thriller under the Searchlight banner, both banners were acquired from the sale of Fox studios to Disney. Sony owns ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’.
Before you complain about superheroes ruining cinema take note that Disney forced theater owners to keep ‘West Side Story’ on screens for the next month or longer and they only have themselves to blame by deliberately limiting the number of screens available for ‘Nightmare Alley’, which is on just over 2,000 screens. ‘West Side Story’ is on approximately 2,800 screens with ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ closer to 3,200 screens. ‘Encanto’ is on close to 3,500 screens and, to no surprise, ‘Spider-man: No Way Home’ is sticking to around 4,300 screens.