Box Office: 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' Slings to Massive $117 Million Domestic Opening
Spider-Man is officially a box-office overachiever.
As of Sunday morning, the latest cinematic depiction of the webbed hero, Spider-Man: Homecoming, is looking at a $117 million opening from 4,348 locations. $10.6 million of the total came from 392 Imax screens domestically. That’s a huge win for Sony, Columbia Pictures, and Marvel Studios for the film, which cost roughly $175 million to produce. The anticipated opening weekend is higher than industry estimates, which were in the $90 million to $110 million range, while the studio cautiously pegged it at $80 million.
Homecoming banked on the idea that the summer box office was craving a family-friendly superhero movie — Tom Holland plays a high school version of Peter Parker who, at 15 years old, has to prove that he is worthy of being called an Avenger. And it seems that bet is paying off. The $117 million figure is the second largest in Sony Pictures history, behind Spider-Man 3.
Much attention has been paid to the flick’s successful marketing campaign, which heavily featured Iron Man (Robert Downy Jr.), who serves as Spider-Man’s mentor in the film. Michael Keaton plays the big bad, Vulture, Jon Favreau plays Spidey’s guardian, Happy Hogan, and Zendaya stars as Michelle Jones (“M.J.”), Parker’s brainy classmate.
Before Homecoming, Jon Watts directed two much lower-budget feature films — the 2014 horror movie Clown and 2015’s Cop Car starring Kevin Bacon. He also has a handful of writing and producing credits, and is one of six writers credited on the Homecoming script. Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal share production credit. While the former has proven essentially infallible in the biz, Homecoming serves as a redemption narrative for the latter. After the infamous 2014 Sony hack, Pascal was ousted from her post at the top of the studio, and began to focus on producing. This is her second major release following last summer’s Ghostbusters reboot, but she also has a hand in a long list of upcoming projects including Sony’s Barbie movie, Steven Spielberg’s A-list-studded The Papers, and future Spider-Man movies.
Despite the reliability of superhero movies at the box office, Homecoming could have been seen as a big bet for all parties involved. For one, it’s the third iteration of the character in the past 15 years — before Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire donned the Spidey suit. The makers had to trust that audiences would be ready to see the character yet again. On top of that, the summer box office has not been particularly kind to the sequels and reboots that have become the industry’s summer signature. As audience fatigue has impacted previously reliable franchises like Transformers and even Despicable Me, the one things that this summer has proved is that the domestic audience is not yet burnt out on superheroes.
This is yet another Marvel movie release that has managed to capture the approval of critics and audience members — something the the DC Extended Universe could not claim until this summer with Wonder Woman. But Marvel’s been there since the beginning. Homecoming currently has a 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and an A CinemaScore.
The Spider-Man: Homecoming Cast Performs the Classic Cartoon Theme:
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