Box office preview: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ will continue the love for Oscar-winning animated franchise

Edward Douglas
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June kicks off this weekend with another anticipated sequel, this one being “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” continuing on from the Oscar-winning animated feature from 2018. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

It was pretty apparent when Sony’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” managed to gross $190 million domestically and roughly the same amount overseas, before winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, that the filmmakers would try to continue the story of Miles Morales, as voiced by Shameik Moore. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” continues Miles’ story as he reunites with Gwen Stacy (voiced by Halle Steinfeld) and the Jake Johnson-voiced “Peter B. Parker.” The sequel also introduces Oscar Isaac voicing Miguel O’Hara aka Spider-Man 2099, and Issa Rae voicing Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman, and it was just announced that Andy Samberg is voicing Ben Reilly aka Scarlet Spider with Karan Soni voicing Spider-Man India and Amandla Stenberg also voicing a role.

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SEEJune 2023 box office preview

The love and enthusiasm for Marvel’s Spider-Man has continued to build among moviegoers over the past two decades from the original trilogy directed by Sam Raimi, to Jon Watts’ MCU-based Spider-Man movies that exploded with “Spider-Man: No Way Home” grossing $1.9 billion worldwide after opening in December 2021 with an astounding $260.1 million.

The animated movies (made apart from Marvel Studios) have given Sony and the sequel’s trio of filmmakers – Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson and Oscar-winning filmmaker Kemp Powers (“Soul”)  – the chance to play with many Spider-related characters in Sony’s playground without worrying about the complicated continuity created by the MCU version of Peter Parker, as played by Tom Holland.

​Reviews for “Across the Spider-Verse” have generally been positive, and there’s a lot of anticipation for seeing more of Miles Morales’ adventures, both among older superhero fans and kids. The film should also benefit from the diversity of characters and its voice cast, which should help push the movie’s opening over the $90 million mark, possibly to even more than $100 million. (Production is already well underway for the third movie, “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse,” planned for release in March, 2024.)

SEE 2023 box office hits: Every movie that made more than $100 million

20th Century Studios is offering counter-programming in the form of the PG-13 horror-thriller, “The Boogeyman,” based on a short story by Stephen King, adapted by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (“A Quiet Place”) and Mark Heyman (“Black Swan”), and directed by Rob Savage (“Host”). It stars Chris Messina (“Air”) as the single father of two girls (Sophie Thatcher from “Yellowjackets” and Vivien Lyra Blair) who are plagued by a malevolent presence.

It’s a fairly straight-forward scarer that’s generally received decent buzz, although the reviews are more mixed to positive on Rotten Tomatoes, right around the same general area as the reviews for “The Little Mermaid.” Horror continues to do decently in theaters among teen and older audience who might not necessarily go to see an animated movie, although it might be overly optimistic to see this one doing as well as last year’s “Smile” or this year’s “M3gan,” both which benefitted from clever marketing. Expect “The Boogeyman” to open in third place in the mid-to-high teen millions as counter-programming, but we’ll see how it fares in terms of its CinemaScore to see how well it might hold up over the rest of a very busy month.

A big question mark this weekend will be whether “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3” overtakes “Fast X” as the latter dropped drastically over the Memorial Day weekend compared to the former. There’s just as good a chance of “Guardians” losing much of the superhero fanbase to Spidey. Even with a massive drop, Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” should still be good to take second place with $44 to 48 million in its second weekend.

SEE Grab the popcorn and sound off in our movie forums

A24 is giving Celine Song’s “Past Lives” a limited release on Friday ahead of its nationwide expansion on May 23. Starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro, the movie was one of the most beloved movies at this year’s Sundance festival, telling a story about two childhood friends in South Korea, who are separated by time and miles, and what happens whenever they’re able to reunite.

Check back on Sunday for the weekend box office recap to see how all the new and returning movies fare.

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