“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is unwrapping another big box office bounty on Christmas Eve.
The grand finale in Sony’s Tom Holland-led superhero trilogy added another $19.6 million on Friday, putting the film on pace to earn $92 million to $100 million over the traditional weekend.
Should estimates hold (and let’s face it, they will), the latest “Spidey” adventure will have made $478 million in its first 10 days in domestic theaters. That’s more than double the next highest-grossing movie in Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which earned a mighty $224 million.
It goes without saying that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is barreling toward box office benchmarks at remarkable speeds. On Sunday, it will become the first pandemic-era movie (and first since 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”) to cross $1 billion at the global box office. Reaching that milestone despite the rapidly spreading omicron variant of COVID-19 would have been impressive enough. But equally as notable, “No Way Home” is going to surpass the billion-dollar mark without playing in China, which is currently the world’s biggest moviegoing market.
With “No Way Home” easily retaining the No. 1 spot on domestic box office charts, Universal’s animated musical comedy “Sing 2″ is inching past its fellow newcomer, Warner Bros. sci-fi sequel “Matrix Resurrections,” to land in second place.
Buoyed by strong audience sentiments (it landed a coveted “A+ CinemaScore), “Sing 2” collected $5.2 million from 3,892 venues on Friday. Over the extended five-day frame, the cartoon sequel is expected to reach $42.8 million, on par with projections. It’s a solid result for a family friendly film at a time when parents with young kids have been more wary about going to the movies.
The fourth “Matrix” installment brought in $2.7 million on Friday, boosting its tally to $13.2 million. The film, directed by Lana Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, is targeting a five-day total around $41 million from 3,550 venues while debuting simultaneously on HBO Max. Right now, it’s neck-in-neck with “Dune” ($41 million) as the biggest debut of the year for Warner Bros.
Heading for a fourth-place finish, Disney and 20th Century’s “The King’s Man” nabbed $1.2 million on Friday and hopes to generate $10 million through Sunday. That haul would be slightly below expectations that the film would make $15 million to $20 million over the five-day frame.
More to come…
