The way “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is performing at the box-office, you’d think there was no panic at all in the media concerning rising COVID cases.
Sony’s Tom Holland-led superhero movie is on pace to earn close to $100 million at the weekend box-office. All of this, despite growing concerns over the omicron variant of COVID-19.
Should estimates hold, ‘No Way Home’ will have made $478 million in its first 10 days in domestic theaters. That’s more than double the next highest-grossing movie of 2021, Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which earned $224 million overall in its 10-week run.
Even more astonishing, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is set to become the first pandemic-era movie to cross $1 billion at the global box office. All this, without playing in China, which is currently the world’s biggest moviegoing market.
Suffice to say, the success of “No Way Home” could very much be cataclysmic is more ways that one.
1) It proves that people are still hungry to go to theaters in the era of COVID-19.
2) It obliterates the idea that China should be coddled to if a film wants to have worldwide box-office success.
3) It finally, and it’s about time this is mentioned, adheres to the fact that the largest demographic for moviegoing is, and has always been, the under 35 male crowd. There’s no way around that. More movies will be greenlit with this demo in mind now.
In third place, “Matrix Resurrections” is likely to have a tepid five-day total of around $41 million from 3,550 venues while debuting simultaneously on HBO Max. Not good. If you want further proof of its underwhelming performance at the box-office, just look at what the second and third films in the franchise did on opening weekend, in comparison.