Hollywood’s young star Tom Holland’s ‘Spider-Man No Way Home’ has become the first pandemic-era movie to cross $1 billion at the global box office.
Sony’s comic-book epic has eclipsed that milestone in a near-record 12 days, tying with 2015’s ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ as the third-fastest film to reach the billion-dollar benchmark. Only 2018’s ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and 2019’s ‘Avengers: Endgame’ were quicker, smashing the coveted tally in 11 and five days, respectively.
The movie managed to blow past $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide given the rapidly spreading omicron variant of Covid-19. It makes Tom’s Marvel superhero adventure the only film since 2019’s ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ to surpass $1 billion globally. No other Hollywood film has come close to nearing those box office revenues in the last two years.
Prior to Spidey’s reign, MGM’s ‘James Bond sequel No Time to Die’, which grossed $774 million globally, stood as the highest-grossing Hollywood film of 2021 (and the pandemic). As the first film to reach $1 billion worldwide, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ took the earthly throne from another box-office behemoth, China’s ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’ ($902 million), to officially cement its place as the year’s highest-grossing film worldwide. It’s also notable that ‘No Way Home’ surpassed that high-watermark without playing in China, which is currently the world’s biggest filmgoing market.
At the US box office, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ had another dominating weekend, soaring high above the competition during a crowded Christmas corridor.
As per Reuters, the newest Spider-Man adventure collected $81 million from 4,336 North American theaters over the weekend. To put that figure in perspective, only select Covid-era releases have managed to generate that kind of coinage in their entire cinematic runs, much less in their second weekend of release. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ also managed to do so at a time when several new films — ‘The Matrix Resurrections,’ ‘Sing 2’ and ‘The King’s Man’, among others — opened nationwide to decent (and not-so-decent) ticket sales.
It brings the film’s ten-day total to a mammoth $467 million at the US box office. That tally is more than double the next highest-grossing film in Disney and Marvel’s ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’, which earned a mighty $224 million domestically.
At the international box office, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ added $121.4 million over the weekend and has made $587 million to date, bringing its global revenues to $1.05 billion.
