Spider-Man: No Way Home first pandemic-era film to hit $1bn

A 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' movie poster

Spider-Man: No Way Home unwrapped the best Christmas gift of all, becoming the first pandemic-era movie to cross $1bn at the global box office. Sony’s comic-book epic has eclipsed that milestone in a near-record 12 days, tying with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the third-fastest film to reach the billion-dollar benchmark. Only 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame were quicker, smashing the coveted tally in 11 and five days, respectively. It’s impressive that Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to blow past $1bn in ticket sales worldwide given the rapidly spreading omicron variant of coronavirus (Covid-19). It makes Tom Holland’s Marvel superhero adventure the only movie since 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to surpass $1bn globally. No other Hollywood film has come close to nearing those box office revenues in the last two years. Prior to Spidey’s reign, MGM’s James Bond sequel No Time to Die, which grossed $774mn globally, stood as the highest-grossing Hollywood film of 2021 (and the pandemic). As the first movie to reach $1bn worldwide, Spider-Man: No Way Home took the earthly throne from another box-office behemoth, China’s The Battle at Lake Changjin ($902mn), to officially cement its place as the year’s highest-grossing film worldwide. It’s also notable that No Way Home surpassed that high-watermark without playing in China, which is currently the world’s biggest movie-going market. At the domestic box office, Spider-Man: No Way Home had another dominating weekend, soaring high above the competition during a crowded Christmas corridor. The newest Spider-Man adventure collected $81mn from 4,336 North American theatres over the weekend. To put that figure in perspective, only select Covid-era releases have managed to generate that kind of coinage in their entire theatrical runs, much less in their second weekend of release.Spider-Man: No Way Home also managed to do so at a time when several new movies – The Matrix Resurrections, Sing 2, and The King’s Man, among others – opened nationwide to decent (and not-so-decent) ticket sales. It brings the film’s 10-day total to a mammoth $467mn at the domestic box office. That tally is more than double the next highest-grossing movie in Disney and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which earned a mighty $224mn domestically. At the international box office, Spider-Man: No Way Home added $121.4mn over the weekend and has made $587mn to date, bringing its global revenues to $1.05bn. “Right now, if you’re under 35 and going to the movies, your first choice is Spider-Man, and your second choice is seeing Spider-Man again,” says David A Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “You can watch The Matrix later with someone who has HBO. That’s how it is when a single movie is dominating the market the way Spider-Man is,” he added.