It pays to have one of the biggest lead-ins ever.
‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’, the first Marvel movie after ‘Avengers: Endgame’, swung past any franchise fatigue to dominate the July Fourth holiday weekend, raking in an estimated $185.1 million since opening Tuesday and earning $93.6 million from Friday to Sunday in North American theatres.
The opening gave Sony Pictures one of its best weeks ever. ‘Far From Home’, which opened overseas before landing in the US, has grossed $580 million worldwide in 10 days of release.
It also came with an assist from Disney’s Marvel Studios, which has partnered with Sony on this and its last two ‘Spider-Man’ releases: 2017’s ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ and last year’s animated spin-off ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’.
Though ‘Far From Home’ fell short of the $117 million Friday to Sunday domestic opening of ‘Homecoming’, its unconventional Tuesday opening paid off. The film’s $39.3 million opening day set a record for any movie on a Tuesday.
To help whet the appetites of Marvel fans — and to approach the record $2.79 billion gross of ‘Avatar’ — Disney re-released ‘Endgame’ in theatres the weekend ahead of ‘Far From Home’.
Part of the draw of the film, starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man and Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio, was seeing the first instalment in a new chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (‘Endgame’ still narrowly trails ‘Avatar’, unadjusted for inflation, with $2.77 billion.)
The strong performance of ‘Far From Home’, which cost approximately $160 million to produce, along with the sustained interest in holdovers like ‘Toy Story 4’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Annabelle Comes Home’ and ‘Aladdin’, helped the industry knock down the deficit compared with this time last year about a percentage point.
