Spider-Man’s Box Office Numbers are ABSURD!

Last week I thought there was a small possibility that Spider-Man: No Way Home could eek into the top five domestic MCU box office opening weekends. Surprise! It’s the second highest! Second highest EVER! Not just for the MCU!

How the heck did Spider-Man: No Way Home manage to pull off the second highest domestic opening weekend box office numbers ever DURING A PANDEMIC! I know many hardcore MCU fans who are choosing to wait this out due to the Omicron variant surge. A few theaters even have socially distanced seating currently, or other precautions in place to reduce crowds. So if that wasn’t an issue, would it have beaten Endgame? Honestly, I have no idea. I didn’t think it’d even rank this high so clearly, my expectations for it were way lower than reality.

Some outlets are ranking it third behind Infinity War for domestic numbers, including Box Office Mojo’s article about it. I’m pulling these numbers from Box Office Mojo’s up-to-date rankings, though. It seems like that article was published before the final numbers were in, because as of this writing the total domestic gross is $260 million, beating Infinity War’s $257,698,183. Articles published last night seem to indicate it only pulled in $254 million, placing it third. But second place, third place, whatever, these numbers are ridiculous. 

The film was originally estimated to earn about $120-185 million during the opening weekend, which would have blown Venom: Let There Be Carnage‘s $90 million out of the water. It raked in $127,947,359 just on Friday, though, so clearly, we were all underestimating it by a great deal. I don’t think anyone really saw this coming.

International numbers are also impressive with $334,200,000 across all the current International markets. This ranks third for a total global gross for an opening weekend with $600.8 million, behind Infinity War‘s $640,521,291 and Endgame’s $1,223,641,414. So while Spider-Man: No Way Home did manage to beat Infinity War on the domestic front, it couldn’t internationally. But it was damn close.

Additionally, a lot of countries haven’t released it quite yet because of the surge. China, which is the biggest overseas market that Disney is constantly trying to court with their movies, doesn’t even have a release date for the film yet. Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand will release the film on the 23rd. Japan will release it on January 7th. The Philippines will release it on January 8th. Slovakia will release it on January 13th. Lastly (on the currently scheduled release dates) is Norway on January 14th. While it’s too late for these to impact opening weekend numbers globally, they could smash local records and the overall global lifetime gross.

I think Endgame is going to hold a lot of records for a long time, though. It earned a whopping $357,115,007 domestically during its opening weekend back in 2018 and, as I said earlier, $1,223,641,414 internationally. Last Thursday when the very first early numbers for Spider-Man: No Way Home were coming in I said there’s no shame in coming in second to that film, especially given the pandemic circumstances we’ve found ourselves in. Second or third place to Endgame would be impressive for any film, but in the pandemic era, it should be worn as a badge of honor.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

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