Box office: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ blasts off with $120.5 million to kick off June
Sony’s animated sequel “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” won the weekend with the best opening for a summer release so far. Read on for the weekend box office report.
Produced and co-written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the animated sequel “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” followed up on the adventures of Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) and Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) with new characters voiced by Oscar Isaac and Issa Rae. Although it was the first of a two-parter that will conclude next March, critics went ape over the movie, giving it a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (almost the same as its Audience Score).
“Across the Spider-Verse” opened with Thursday afternoon previews, where it racked up $17.4 million that was merged into its Friday take of $51.8 million, the biggest opening day for a movie in 2023. (To be fair, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opened on a Wednesday but exceeded that amount on its first Friday without including previews.)
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According to estimates, “Across the Spider-Verse” has grossed $120.5 million in its first weekend, which would make it the first movie of the summer (and only the second this year) to open over $120 million. (Neither of Marvel Studios’ other sequels this year managed to do so.) Even so, that puts it behind the $120.9 million opening for Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 4” in 2019, so it’s not even in the top 6 openings for an animated movie, as some may have hoped. Sony declined to report a CinemaScore for the movie, despite it likely to get either an “A” or even “A+” from audiences polled.
Internationally, “Across the Spider-Verse” debuted with $88.1 million for a global opening of $208.6 million with China having the best opening with $17.3 million, followed by Mexico with $11.6 million.
Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” dropped to second place, down 58% from its Memorial Day opening with $40.6 million and an estimated ten-day gross of $186.2 million, which really isn’t so bad for a movie that’s likely to cross $200 million sometime in the next week. Overseas, the live action musical adaptation, directed by Rob Marshall, brought in another $42.3 million to bring its global total to $326.7 million.
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Disney division 20th Century Studios tried to offer some counter-programming with the PG-13 horror film, “The Boogeyman,” based on a Stephen King short story, which opened in 3,205 on Friday, but with lackluster reviews and an awful “B-” CinemaScore, it wasn’t going to be a huge breakout hit. It ended up making $12.3 million to take third place, averaging $3,838 per theater.
Marvel Studios’ “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3” took fourth place with $10.2 million, down 51% from its Memorial Day weekend with $322.7 million grossed domestically. That puts it firmly in place as the second-highest grossing movie of the year. It added another $10.2 million overseas to bring its global total to $780.1 million.
Universal was knocked out of the top 4 for the first time since April as “Fast X” took a nasty 60% hit from Memorial Day to take fifth place with $9.2 million, bringing its domestic total to $128.4 million. Overseas, it continues to do big business with another $41.4 million grossed this weekend for a global total of $603.3 million. In China alone, it has grossed $125 million, almost as much as North America.
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Universal’s animated mega-hit, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” added another $3.4 million this weekend to take sixth place, bringing its domestic total to $566.3 million as it surpasses $1.3 billion globally, easily the highest-grossing movie of 2023 so far.
All of last week’s other new movies fell below that, with Sebastian Maniscalco’s “About My Father” taking seventh place with $2.1 million, down 51% from its opening weekend, followed by “The Machine” with $1.8 million (down 64%), with neither having made more than $9 million so far.
Celine Song’s Sundance fave, the drama “Past Lives, starring Greta Lee, Tae Yoo, and John Magaro, opened in four theaters in New York and L.A. where it grossed an estimated $232,000 or $58,000 average per theater. A24 will continue to expand the movie over the next few weekends until its wide release on June 23.
Most players figured that “Across the Spider-Verse” would be #1 this weekend in the Gold Derby box office prediction game with slightly fewer predicting correctly that it would open over $100 million. Things were more divided for the third, fourth, and fifth place predictions, with only 25 players picking “Fast X” to drop to fifth place in its third weekend.
Only one player went 6 for 6 in the May 26 box office game, and that was “Hazardous Kirby” although “Jason” scored the most points with 64, 433.
On Friday, Paramount releases “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” a relaunch of the movie franchise based on the popular Hasbro toys. Check back on Wednesday to learn more about its box office prospects.
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