To no one’s surprise, Sony Pictures’ The Amazing Spider-Man swung to the top of this week’s Fourth of July Holiday Box Office, and managed to leave a few records in the dust since midnight screenings began on July 3rd.
The Amazing Spider-Man amassed a record breaking $35 million opening day, the highest debut ever for a Tuesday. $7.5 million of that came from midnight shows, and $4 million from the 307 IMAX 3D screens.
The Marc Webb directed reboot of the popular Marvel web slinger has now over $140 million in domestic ticket sales from its first six days of release, and a total of $342.1M internationally.
The box office success also allows Sony a sigh of relief that starting over the franchise with a new cast a mere ten years after the previous big screen origin story was not a miscalculation. Similar recent re-boots drew less than Spider-Man’s weekend take of $65M, albeit without the advantage of higher 2012 premium 3-D ticket prices. But Batman Begins scored $48.7M in its opening weekend in 2005, and X-Men: First Class debuted to $55.1M in 2011. Sony has plans to make a trilogy from the series, which was fairly obvious from the deep story groundwork laid down in this installment, and will likely see the successive chapters open to bigger numbers.
Warner Bros. is without a doubt watching closely as they will need to figure out a plan of action (again) regarding Batman’s big screen future following Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan’s curtain cowl with the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. Batman Begins retold the Caped Crusader’s origins after the (much needed) hiatus following 1997’s critic and fan panned campfest Batman & Robin. The studio will need to look towards the thankless task of moving beyond Nolan’s trilogy with another interpretation.
Ted and Magic Mike held their ground with solid footing, coming in at numbers two and five, which stranded studio newcomers, the violent Oliver Stone directed guns and drugs drama Savages, and the 3-D tour documentary Katy Perry: Part Of Me, with relatively disappointing box office leavings.
Falling out of the top ten this week were the geek friendly Prometheus, Snow White & The Huntsman, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, while the animated Brave and Madagascar 3 kept 3-D CGI family fare alive and kicking.
1. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN – Weekend Gross: $65M, Total: $140M
3. BRAVE – Weekend Gross: $20.1M, Total: $174.5M
4. SAVAGES – Weekend Gross: $16.1M
5. MAGIC MIKE – Weekend Gross: $15.6M, Total: $72.2M
6. MADEA’S WITNESS PROTECTION – Weekend Gross: $10.2M, Total: $45.8M
7. MADAGASCAR 3 – Weekend $7.7M, Total: $196M
Next week’s big studio release is 20th Century Fox’s Ice Age: Continental Drift. The fourth film in the popular series should affect the animation competition considerably, in addition to splitting further the availability of 3-D screens between Spider-Man, Brave, Madagascar, and Katy Perry.
The Amazing Spider-Man has 12 more days to enjoy his superhero free reign until battling it out with The Dark Knight Rises on July 20th.
SOURCES: Entertainment Weekly, Deadline, Yahoo!
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