Spider-Man rakes in stunning $346m in North American opening

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Covid-schmovid: Sony and Marvel's new Spider-Man: No Way Home scored the third-biggest domestic opening of all time, taking in an estimated US$253 million (S$346 million) in its massive North American weekend opening.

Box office watchers are spinning hopeful predictions, with analysts eyeing it as the pandemic era's first potential billion-dollar-grossing film.

Its box office sales trail only 2019's Avengers: Endgame (US$357 million) and the previous year's Avengers: Infinity War (US$258 million), according to the BoxOfficeMojo website.

Spider-Man easily surpassed early estimates of US$130 million to US$150 million.

The new superhero blockbuster is well on its way to earning US$600 million overseas, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported on Sunday (Dec 19).

And this comes as cinemas continue to battle their way back from months-long Covid-induced closures.

"This is an incredible opening," Mr David Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, told AFP.

While most big series struggle to keep their momentum, he added, "Spider-Man is exploding."

Analysts, however, are warning that the industry's recovery still has a long way to go, especially amid fears of a new surge in coronavirus cases fuelled by the Omicron variant.

The latest Spider-Man instalment is British star Tom Holland's third solo outing in the wildly popular role, played in earlier films by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

The webslinger has form when it comes to big openings.

The original film starring Maguire in 2002 was the first movie in the history of cinema to gross more than US$100 million on its debut weekend.

The No Way Home plot picks up directly from 2019's Far From Home, which saw Peter Parker publicly unmasked by the villainous Mysterio.

For No Way Home to break US$1 billion worldwide, the film will surely need to do well in China, where it has yet to be granted a release date.

Although 2021 is on course to roughly double movie theatres' box office take of last year, there have been more misses than hits.

Films leaning toward older audiences, such as director Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, have generally bombed, opening to just US$10.5 million the previous weekend.

The other top films were thus relegated to the distant sidelines.

Disney's Encanto, an animated fantasy with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, placed second for the Friday-through-Sunday period with US$6.3 million, according to Exhibitor Relations.

20th Century's West Side Story, with Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler playing star-crossed lovers in the mean streets of New York, slipped to third spot, at just US$3.4 million.

In fourth was Sony's Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the latest chapter in that supernatural franchise, also at S$3.4 million.

And in fifth was Searchlight's new crime thriller Nightmare Alley. Despite strong reviews, the Guillermo del Toro film took in only US$3 million.

Rounding out the top 10 were: House Of Gucci (US$1.9 million); Eternals (US$1.2 million); Clifford The Big Red Dog (US$400,000); Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (US$280,000) and Dune (US$240,000).