The struggles of June’s box office are hopefully behind us as the calendar turns to June and one of the most iconic superheroes of all-time returns to the big screen in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Sony will distribute the 23rd film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe this week, opting to get a jump start on the Fourth of July holiday corridor that’s delivered a number of box office hits in years past.
Our previous coverage of the film pointed to early tracking for a six-day opening around $200 million domestically, and despite the poor June market for theaters, we still think that’s achievable this week — although Sony is far more cautious in expecting around $125 million for the Tuesday-Sunday period, an understandable tempering of expectations in the current box office climate.
On Tuesday, the film opened to $39.25 million at 4,634 locations (the highest July location count ever) and topped 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man as the highest Tuesday opening day in domestic history. That previous film held the benchmark with $35.0 million.
It should be noted, of course, that Far From Home did not have the usual preview gross boost from the night before true opening day as most films do nowadays, so projections remain very much in flux at this stage.
In Spidey’s favor this week are the usual elements: critics have awarded the sequel a 93 percent Rotten Tomatoes score (among 219 reviews), and early audience polls stand at a strong 98 percent on the same site.
Moreover, the film is the first MCU release post-Endgame, and fans are anxious to see where the franchise goes from there. Given the direct lead-in and emotional arc of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the last two Avengers films, Far From Home serves as the epilogue to what has been deemed as the end of Marvel’s third phase of films — and excluding online rumors, it’s still the last officially announced project from the studio, and the last Marvel pic audiences will see for another ten months.
One of the more apt comparisons in that frame of mind is the six-day start of Iron Man 3 in 2013, which earned $204.8 million (with no holiday or summer weekday boost) as the first MCU film to release after the record-breaking success of 2012’s The Avengers.
Beyond that, Tom Holland’s popularity as the character — as well as Zendaya’s well-received role as MJ — have played significant factors in teen audiences embracing what is otherwise the third of four Spidey iterations on the big screen in the last two decades. The success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse last Christmas could add further goodwill to the brand even though it has no relation to the MCU storyline.
In fairness, it could also be argued that Spider-Man fatigue might settle in at some point given his appearance in a handful of MCU films over the past four years. If this sequel, which additionally has the goodwill of 2017’s Homecoming to build from, falls on the conservative end of expectations at the box office this week, that fatigue will certainly be one of the explanations to be thrown around.
Nevertheless, this is ultimately a sure-fire hit with a strong $110.8 million international take already in the bag from just China, Hong Kong, and Japan. We see little reason for domestic results to be less impressive, but it’s still important to exercise cautious optimism until the stateside market officially rebounds and moviegoer confidence returns to normal in the actual results.
Spider-Man: Far From Home
3-Day / 6-Day Domestic Range: $75 million – $110 million / $150 million – $220 million
Top 10 vs. Last Year
Boxoffice projects this weekend’s top ten films will increase approximately 1 – 6 percent from the same frame last year when Ant-Man and the Wasp debuted to $75.8 million as part of an overall $179.4 million top ten weekend post-Independence Day.
Weekend Forecast
| Film | Distributor | 3-Day Weekend Forecast | Projected Domestic Total through Sunday, July 7 | % Change from Last Wknd |
| Spider-Man: Far From Home | Sony / Columbia | $97,400,000 | $200,000,000 | NEW |
| Toy Story 4 | Disney / Pixar | $30,000,000 | $293,300,000 | -50% |
| Yesterday | Universal | $10,700,000 | $35,100,000 | -37% |
| Annabelle Comes Home | Warner Bros. / New Line | $10,600,000 | $49,400,000 | -48% |
| Aladdin (2019) | Disney | $6,200,000 | $316,400,000 | -39% |
| Midsommar | A24 | $4,900,000 | $8,500,000 | NEW |
Alex Edghill contributed to this report
Forecasts subject to change as location counts are finalized before Friday.
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The post Weekend Forecast: Sony & Marvel Studios Poised to Liven Up the Summer Box Office with <em>Spider-Man: Far From Home</em> appeared first on Boxoffice.
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