'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Beats 'Star Wars' Sequels to Become Third-Biggest Opening Ever (variety.com) 102
Variety argues that young men — the key audience for comic book and science-fiction films "have been fueling attendance for pandemic-era hits..."
But even with that, this weekend Spider-Man: No Way Home "crushed box office expectations, generating a mammoth $253 million from 4,336 theaters in North America." It was easily the best domestic opening weekend turnout of any movie in pandemic times. Prior to this weekend, no other COVID-era film had been able to cross even $100 million in a single weekend. The biggest domestic debut previously belonged to another Sony comic book sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which generated $90 million in its initial release. And after only three days in cinemas, Spider-Man: No Way Home is already the highest-grossing film of this year (and last). Overseas, the latest Spidey outing has collected $334.2 million from 60 international markets for a global tally of $587.2 million.
It ranks as the third-biggest worldwide opening weekend ever....
The film is experiencing the kind of demand that hasn't been witnessed in theaters since Disney's every-hero-but-the-kitchen-sink mashup Avengers: Endgame, which collected a historic $357 million in its 2018 debut. Spider-Man: No Way Home isn't quite reaching those (basically unattainable) heights, but the movie has been a formidable force, zooming past opening weekend tickets sales for box office behemoths like 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($247 million), 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($220 million), 2015's Jurassic World ($208 million), 2012's The Avengers ($207 million) and 2018's Black Panther ($202 million). It stands behind Avengers: Endgame, and 2017's Avengers: Infinity War ($257 million debut) to land the third-best opening weekend in history. Counting No Way Home, only eight films have ever crossed $200 million in ticket sales in a single weekend....
The film's remarkable box office revenues coincide with the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which is already leading to restaurant, concert and live-theater closures in New York City....
Box office experts believe there's one reason why "Spider-Man: No Way Home" is turbo-charging the box office: superheroes sell. In other words, the comic book adventure's performance doesn't reverse fortunes for the beleaguered movie theater business. Rather, industry insiders believe it punctuates the reality that multiplexes have been — and will continue to be — more reliant than ever on big-budget spectacles, particularly of the superhero variety.
The same weekend Guillermo del Toro's $60-million movie Nightmare Alley brought in $3 million.
But even with that, this weekend Spider-Man: No Way Home "crushed box office expectations, generating a mammoth $253 million from 4,336 theaters in North America." It was easily the best domestic opening weekend turnout of any movie in pandemic times. Prior to this weekend, no other COVID-era film had been able to cross even $100 million in a single weekend. The biggest domestic debut previously belonged to another Sony comic book sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which generated $90 million in its initial release. And after only three days in cinemas, Spider-Man: No Way Home is already the highest-grossing film of this year (and last). Overseas, the latest Spidey outing has collected $334.2 million from 60 international markets for a global tally of $587.2 million.
It ranks as the third-biggest worldwide opening weekend ever....
The film is experiencing the kind of demand that hasn't been witnessed in theaters since Disney's every-hero-but-the-kitchen-sink mashup Avengers: Endgame, which collected a historic $357 million in its 2018 debut. Spider-Man: No Way Home isn't quite reaching those (basically unattainable) heights, but the movie has been a formidable force, zooming past opening weekend tickets sales for box office behemoths like 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($247 million), 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($220 million), 2015's Jurassic World ($208 million), 2012's The Avengers ($207 million) and 2018's Black Panther ($202 million). It stands behind Avengers: Endgame, and 2017's Avengers: Infinity War ($257 million debut) to land the third-best opening weekend in history. Counting No Way Home, only eight films have ever crossed $200 million in ticket sales in a single weekend....
The film's remarkable box office revenues coincide with the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which is already leading to restaurant, concert and live-theater closures in New York City....
Box office experts believe there's one reason why "Spider-Man: No Way Home" is turbo-charging the box office: superheroes sell. In other words, the comic book adventure's performance doesn't reverse fortunes for the beleaguered movie theater business. Rather, industry insiders believe it punctuates the reality that multiplexes have been — and will continue to be — more reliant than ever on big-budget spectacles, particularly of the superhero variety.
The same weekend Guillermo del Toro's $60-million movie Nightmare Alley brought in $3 million.
Spiderman... (Score:4)
Re:Spiderman... (Score:4, Informative)
Ok seriously though, how many diseases do spiders spread? I can't think of any. In fact they eat insects and ticks that spread disease.
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Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be... (Score:5, Insightful)
...a forecast.
"...and there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!" -- Not Sure's election campaign speech https://images.amcnetworks.com... [amcnetworks.com]
Can we please have more films with intriguing but believable characters, situations & plots please?
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In the 80's, they released a book called "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way".
In 2021, they released a book called "How to READ Comics the Marvel Way". [marvel.com] Society declining in real time.
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Yeah, pretty much my first though as well.
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Can we please have more films with intriguing but believable characters, situations & plots please?
Last I checked, indie films haven't been banned. Mainstream entertainment has always been low-brow stuff, and the only reason us older dogs remember some prior mainstream films with a nostalgic fondness is that the filter of time made us forget the ones which were utter shit [imdb.com].
Most of what's on the "new release" charts of entertainment, be it video games, music, or movies, is primarily crap. Every so often, something great comes along, and as the years pass, that's the stuff we remember.
Re:Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you even seen any of those movies? What made them good was often the plot, especially Infinity War/Endgame. Black Panther had a great villain with a genuine point.
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Captain Obvious and Captain Planet want you to kno (Score:2)
Every Marvel movie has become, giant thing in sky, make go boom and fall to the ground at end of movie. .... Even the Spider-Man movies are, they just make fake projected giant things in sky go boom and fall to the ground, so they are just "meta" at it.
Welcome to Planet Earth and comics. Maybe someday you will learn what that actually means to humans and the stories we tell.
But keep mad with whatever thing up there half of us are not gonna read (including me; skipped to the quote) to justify whatever sadness you feel when the Beautiful People in Colorful Clothes playout the standard 8 themes humans have.
Till then, Amazo!!! we await your masterpiece of fiction to show us all our bad WWE feels.
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The point that Black Panther's villain made is that Wakanda really could have, should have done more for black people. While they were being enslaved and systematically discriminated against, Wakanda hid away. Even today, revealing itself would be a huge boost for a lot of people, and the entire African continent.
Re: Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be... (Score:2)
That's not a real point since Wakanda isn't a real place.
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However crap those films were, they did at least have plots. Marvel is little more than WWE with masks & fantasy sci-fi special effects. The answer to every problem is fighting and when that fails they have to round up more characters for bigger fights -- Straight out of the WWE playbook. Oh, & just like WWE, they tell you who the good guys & bad guys are right from the start & have the Spandex costumes to match.
THANK YOU! It is infantile garbage.
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Re:Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be... (Score:4, Informative)
Sure there were plenty of dumb movies made in the past, but if you Google (or Bing, I suppose) "movies released in 1961", you see West Side Story (!), Yojimbo, The Hustler, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Films made by and for adults. Not a comic book movie among them.
The highest grossing movie of 1961 was 101 Dalmations, and it made more money than #2-4 combined. The top 5 grossing films were a cartoon, a musical, a WW2 action movie, a crusades war film, and a family comedy. While today we have more fantasy (comic book) action movies than war movies, that list of film categories wouldn't feel that out of place for a modern year's top grossing films.
Modern films are much better than they were 50 years ago. The plots are more complex and interesting, the cinematography is leagues better, the acting and script writing is better, and obviously the technology, makeup / costumes, and special effects are better. Only nostalgia can look at films from the 60's and say they are better than today's films.
Not all movies are going to be high brow, because that has never been what most people wants. And most dramas are moving to streaming services because they don't benefit as much from the theater experience as blockbusters do. None of this has to do with the dumbing down of American popular culture.
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Well no. Intriguing but believable characters, situations and plots don't make money. The audience that wants those aspects of a movie to be well-done is small, and pandering to them often results in movies that don't do well.
The audience of people that just want a lot of drama, action, conflict, motion, color, CGI, etc,. with merely a hint of a plot to tie it all together, is HUGE. It is worldwide! That's where all the money is, so that's how most of our movies are going to be.
Re:Idiocracy wasn't supposed to be... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's fine. But I am still hoping for some dumb, loud blockbuster movies without any damn superheroes with 'powers' in it.
The problem is that in real life, humans are frail creatures. In Hollywood however, even humans without implied superpowers frequently survive action sequences which should've sent them to the hospital (or depending of the severity of their injuries, the morgue). This trope was parodied in Last Action Hero [imdb.com]:
Jack Slater : [after punching through a car window] My hand. It really hurts.
Danny Madigan : Things work different here. You can't smash a car window with your bare hand and not have it hurt.
Jack Slater
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That's fine. But I am still hoping for some dumb, loud blockbuster movies without any damn superheroes with 'powers' in it.
Don't Tenet and Bond fit that bill? Both loud popular blockbusters, no superpowers.
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Well Tenet had time travel. Bond, well they had smart blood and a nano virus. I guess the GP means a bit more grounded.
You could add Fast & Furious, if you are willing to ignore how physics work. Physics and action movies don't really go together. For real stunts I don't think you can beat 80s Hong Kong. When you see Jackie Chan hanging off the side of a bus by an umbrella, that's really Jackie Chan hanging off the side of a bus by an umbrella, no wires or green screen or trick photography.
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Bond has a super powered liver...
Joking aside, as one of your sibling posts pointed out, in real life, either of those characters would be dead in minutes, the things they survive are very unbelievable.
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Nostogla is a bad thing. It is actually one of my complaint with this movie, how it basically boosted it's value, just by adding nostogla. By bringing back some old story lines.
However, the past had plenty of movies and books that may had made money but didn't fair the test of time.
Those movies that you do look fondly on, from you teens and early 20s to the previous generation are just as old and predictable as the new stuff is to you.
The coming of age story is thousands of years old. And is retold over
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Can we please have more films with intriguing but believable characters, situations & plots please?
To me pushing the boundaries of what can be imagined is an inherent feature of scifi, not a bug. If the things you listed are the things you're mainly looking for in a movie, other genres are probably more likely to contain those things.
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Can we please have more films with intriguing but believable characters, situations & plots please?
I'm guessing the word you're looking for is "realistic", because the vast majority of people clearly disagree with what you're trying to say here. Ignoring that tho...
A movie ticket on a good screen in a nice theater is easily over $20 nowadays. If people are going to pay that much to see a movie, they want to be wowed. They want the experience. They want big action movies with lots of special effects that are going to look and sound better than what they can get at home. If you're not offering that high en
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Those films now release primarily on streaming, because that is where the audience is for those films.
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Without looking it up on IMDb or any other source, name a movie from say, 1955. Now name every movie in 1955. According to IMDb, 2097 movies were released in 1955. How many do you remember today? Probably one, maybe two?
The truth is, you're a victim of survivor bias - the stuff of yore isn't any better than stuff of now - it only feels like it because only the good stuff of yore survived - you don't get ex
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One big reason I feel Spiderman is doing so well is the LACK of "wokism". There's no agenda... Its just a fun movie to watch and not worry about being spoon-fed identity politics. I think that's great!
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There's no agenda... Its just a fun movie to watch and not worry about being spoon-fed identity politics.
Shame that this is such a rare and praiseworthy accomplishment these days.
And yet no one is paying attention to the correlation (quote from a Dr. Who article):
Despite receiving praise from fans and critics, the episode's ratings were down.
Despite ticking every box in Doctor Who fans' wishlist, the episode wasn't able to improve on a gradual ratings decline across the course of the series, ending up with 3.45 million viewers on the night -- down from 3.76m last week.
And from here on down again (Score:4)
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an industry that has been dying for 60 years
[Citation Required]
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an industry that has been dying for 60 years
[Citation Required]
My eyes? And the 30 years I have done it myself. If you are tone deaf to theatrical experiences dying, I got no way to prove anything to you.
Cry harder (Score:2, Insightful)
My eyes?
A worthless anecdote describing at best your very local and personal situation, not an industry. In the meantime cinemas are enjoying immense popularity with more and newer cinemas opening and more existing now than they did 60 years ago.
That's data.
That isnt data, that is, like mine, your fucking opinion.
The fact you think your opinion, with zero actual facts, supports anything other than that, and that is what got your ass in a twitch, is your own moronic issue.
But keep spending your money on dying movie theatres, aint no one telling you to be less stupid than you appear.
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No, his post was literally facts from data. Yours is some weird personal opinion that wasn't true 60 years ago (what you seem to consider the peak) and shows no evidence of being true now.
No, he stated his opinion on shit he has read. Show me a single citation of anything in this conversation.
You are both trying to prove something against an opinion I stated. His follow up was a question as to how I base my opinion. I told you: My opinion comes with 30 years in the industry of TV and FILM.
You have a single anecdotal movie as evidence against 30 years of slef-admited industry decline -- AGAIN, GO LOOK YOURSELF.
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Only back to the 70's, but here is the answer to your question.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/... [boxofficemojo.com]
Besides the reduction for the last two years because of Covid, the numbers have been going up year after year.
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Only back to the 70's, but here is the answer to your question.
Yeah, you are also wrong.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
but lets all keep posting actual facts this time instead of feelings.
The number you "see go up" is because it has been slacking for THIRTY YEARS. Also, more money because of inflationary moves over 3 decades isnt the same as number of tickets sold. Try to learn the difference.
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it's quite obvious that the % amount of people going to movie theaters is dwindling. The movie industry isn't dying, the but theaters definitely are on a downwards slope, compared to the total population increase and amount of tickets sold.
people in USA (millions)
1989: 249
2019: 329
https://www.macrotrends.net/co... [macrotrends.net]
movie tickets sold (in millions, for whole of NA)
1989: 1262
2019: 1239
https://www.stati [statista.com]
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Try and realize the world of movies, media, etc, really revolves around selling teenagers and 20-something stuff. Once you hit your 30s, you are suppose to spend all your money on children. This affect gets worse as you enter your 40s. The world stops paying attention to you until you are then old enough to start taking lots of meds, hence all those damn drug commercials.
Dollars? (Score:5, Funny)
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Who cares? Investors don't. Businesses don't. Industry benchmarks don't. People who get paid don't get paid by the ticket. So why is the number of tickets relevant?
Re:Dollars? (Score:5, Interesting)
The portion of the possible audience though might be less important. Knowing how many actual people paid to sit in actual theatres to see the movie could be really telling, unless Hollywood aspires to just make money off premium theatres going forward.
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Sure it made more money than Star Wars, but when Star Wars debuted a ticket was really expensive if it was more than $0.75. Now a typical ticket can easily be $12.
Put the boxoffice numbers through an inflation calculator. Simply getting numbers of people is meaningless. You may be more interested in how popular a movie is, but numbers alone without being corrected for other variables is also not a judge of popularity. The world is different to how it was in 1977. Cinemas are different places with different services and entertainment value. Possibilities to see a movie are different. Piracy is a thing. There may be more or less cinemas. There are definitely more peopl
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Even run thru an inflation encounter, it would be a more "honest" measure if it were "sold X % of the seats available for the first N showings"
Unless you think there are an equal number of movie theater seats today as there were 40-80 years ago.
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Simply getting numbers of people is meaningless.
It's better than nothing as ticket prices vary from showing time-to-showing time, theater-to-theater and city-to-city, let alone year-to-year.
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I'll definitely wait until I can see it at home. Not worth the risk right now.
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Now a typical ticket can easily be $12.
Easily $12? That's matinee pricing on the crappiest screen in the theater. Around here an evening showing on the good screens is about $22.
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Not to mention the fact that Star Wars only opened on 32 screens.
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Damn. (Score:1)
I was really hoping to see cinemas consigned to the dustbin of history. The concept of having to actually go out to see a movie just seems so archaic. If the buggy whip industry had the same kind of control over the market as Hollywood, you’d still see people driving horses and carriages down the road, too.
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I was really hoping to see cinemas consigned to the dustbin of history. The concept of having to actually go out to see a movie just seems so archaic
Going to see a movie was, in the beginning, inherently a social event. It's meant to get people out and mixing and talking and enjoying together. It's meant to have some activation energy you actually have to expend to go and see it. That which you do nothing for means nothing. It's great to be in a real audience and feel their energy and to contribute to it. I love to laugh with people and to hear gasps and even clapping when some piece of truly great film-making happens in front of your eyes. As soo
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Oh, and I'd love to see some horses and carriages trotting down the road too. Clearly you've never been to New York or London. But then that's a touch of class that I suspect is above you as well.
i'm used to live in Jaffa in Israel, we actually have horses and carriages, while they're nice looking, they jam traffic, and shit next to house entrances.
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"buggy whip industry"
Other People's Money reference??
They made another one? (Score:3)
Paraphrasing Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) from The Good Place [wikipedia.org]:
They made [another] Spider-Man? What is there left to say?
Re: They made another one? (Score:1)
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It had a stupidly large marketing campaign, ...
Maybe they could have just spent that money on free tickets to the show for people ... :-)
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it has Zendaya who is "black but not too dark" with the physique of a 12 year old and that shit sells big these days
You seem triggered.
Is it your racism, or your barely suppressed pedophelia that is causing you to lash out?
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These superhero movies are killing movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Their is so little variety these days.
You either get low budget indie movie or these mega blockbusters 100+ million dollar movie. Everything in the middle is pretty much dead.
I'm sick of super hero movies.
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The West Side Story recently released was really great.
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So, why aren't people seeing it? I am not into musicals so I am not going to watch it.
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Something I heard is that the demographic that is into that kind of thing is more interested in seeing it streaming than in a theater.
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Last Night In Soho was good.
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Plenty of films that came out in the past few years that didn't have the massive $100m+ budgets and that definitely aren't indie films.
Bohemian Rhapsody (the Queen biopic) for example had a budget of only $50m and I would hardly call that "indie".
Films don't need to cost $100m to get made and be popular and make bank at the box office (Bohemian Rhapsody made over $900m of a $50m budget, I am sure 20th Century Fox would consider that a success...
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Not quite (Score:4, Funny)
Sinky was there, just trapped under all the rubble of The Avengers headquarters.
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He was a very popular character, he was even featured in a few scenes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Spiderman better than... (Score:5, Funny)
You could always watch classics like this https://disney.fandom.com/wiki... [fandom.com]
Nightmare Alley is waiting for Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
The superhero movies make sense in a theater, like watching sports in a stadium with a bunch of like minded fans. The audience for a brooding well shot noir feels they can avoid the hassle, and any epidemiological risk, and watch it at home from the comfort of their own HBO subscription. And the audience for West Side Story ... has already seen the original, might get around to it as a stream and was never very large to begin with in 2021.
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They got a lot of mileage out of Squid Game because someone else made it.
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There is no way that I am going to give them money in order to be able to read a television show.
Summary for those who didn't watch (Score:4, Informative)
A bunch of idiots wear costumes and fly around over and over again.
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Dammit put spoiler alert next time. You ruined all the MCU movies for me.
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Inflation (Score:2)
Double the ticket price = double the box office numbers? The price of an adult ticket near me is $17.49. Absolutely no FSCKing way I'm paying that much to exchange mucous droplets with hundreds of annoying strangers, just to watch movie based on a comic book character.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (Score:1)
Sequel (Score:2)
Spider-Man: Dead from Omicron.
It's only logical... (Score:2)
It makes sense that big budget superhero spectacles are the only thing doing respectably at the box office. They're the only films where the theater experience is vastly superior to what most of us can easily get at home, where the huge screen and the powerful surround sound system matter. Sadly, it likely means a future where the middle disappears from the theater market; those films will only get token theatrical releases or go straight to PVOD or subscription streaming.
It was the Cast in the movie (Score:2)
There may have been boys going to the movie, but there were just as many, if not more, girls that went.
Toby is a girl magnet and Zendaya is a favorite girl pop star.
So the numbers they see don't always reflect on the quality of the movie.
Stan the Man does it again! (Score:1)