SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING earned est. ¥9.8M ($1.5M) from Thurs midnights, #4 in MCU behind Ultron (¥29.8M), Cap3 (¥17M), & Iron Man 3 (¥12.4M)
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING earns $1.5M from midnights, #4 in MCU
Spider-Man Swoops to the Rescue in China
While September is often the slowest moviegoing month on the calendar following the lucrative summer season and students’ return to school, several releases over the last two weekends — Valerian, Dunkirk, Cars 3, Baby Driver — had great opportunities to take advantage of the pent up demand for imported films accumulated after six weeks of a domestic blackout, yet all failed to connect meaningfully with audiences.
Luckily, Spider-Man heard the call, and although he’s two months late arriving in China, Spidey will waste no time this weekend pulling the country’s box office out of peril…
China Set To Drive ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Toward $850+ Million
Spider-Man: Homecoming is winding down at the domestic box office, as its run in current foreign territories enters the final weeks as well. But the box office race is far from over for the web-head, as the latest MCU offering swings into China on September 8 with strong odds of putting up the second-highest box office tally of the franchise’s 16 year history.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is winding down at the domestic box office, as its run in current foreign territories enters the final weeks as well. But the box office race is far from over for the web-head, as the latest MCU offering swings into China on September 8 with strong odds of putting up the second-highest box office tally of the franchise’s 16 year history.
Homecoming looks to add another $7+/- million in North America plus around $3-4+/- million in existing foreign markets, for a pre-China cume in the neighborhood of $760 million. That would already be good enough to surpass the final global receipts of the previous two Amazing Spider-Man movies. And an absurdly weak $25 million run in China would push Homecoming past Spider-Man 2 for third place on the franchise all-time box office list. But there’s plenty of indication this latest entry in the Spider-Man series, with the inclusion of Iron Man and official MCU status, will push Homecoming far higher.
First of all, the previous Spider-Man movie — The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — hit $94 million in China three years ago. Marvel’s five releases since that year have all consistently performed north of $100 million in the Middle Kingdom, and that includes a mix of big team-up productions like the Avengers sequel as well as solo releases of lesser-known characters like Ant-Man.
It’s true that 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man only took $48 million in China, but keep in mind the theater count and appetite for Hollywood fare has continued to grow since then, reflected in the sequel’s $94 million cume and all of those $100+ million runs by the MCU films. Even if we consider a lower-end $50 million range, that still puts Homecoming at around $810 million when all is said and done, good enough for third place in Spidey franchise history, behind only the original origin film in 2002 and the $890 million eye-popping run of Spider-Man 3.
A lower-end result is highly unlikely, though. Since 2012, only two of the nine films from Marvel Studios have grossed south of the $100 million mark in China — Thor: The Dark World in 2013 (with $55 million) and Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 (with $86 million). Since Spider-Man was hitting in the $50 million ballpark back in 2012, I think it’s fair to say a result similar to The Dark World is highly unlikely nowadays for Homecoming. I’d bet $75-85 million is the more plausible low-end prediction for the film at this point, with $120+ million the higher-end plausible prediction.
Which all means Spider-Man: Homecoming’s most likely lowest-end possible worldwide box office result will be near $835 million. That’s more than enough to pass Sam Raimi’s original 2002 film, which took $821 million. But the interesting part is that a $100+ million result would push Homecoming to at least $860 million, creating a photo-finish against Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which stands at $863 million. Should Homecoming actually hit closer to the $120+/- million range, that would hypothetically suggest a final cume north of $880 million, and that’s when it gets really interesting, because it would be in spitting distance of Spider-Man 3 for the crown as highest-grossing Spidey flick in history….