Spider-Man Swings to Second-Biggest Opening Ever, Handing Disney a Win It Needed
The new film's global box office haul arrives just as the studio banks on Avengers: Doomsday to carry the year
By Barnaby "Bottom-Line" Coyne
Ticket buyers turned out in force this weekend, and Disney will take it.
The new Spider-Man film posted the second-biggest global opening weekend in the character's history, according to BBC Business. The studio has not been shy about needing the win: the film's performance is described as "a much-needed boost" ahead of the release of Avengers: Doomsday, the next big swing from Marvel Studios.
Here's the plain math of it. Superhero franchises are expensive to make and even more expensive to market. A studio bets hundreds of millions on a single weekend, and when the bet pays off, it doesn't just fatten one quarter's earnings — it buys confidence for the next release on the slate. That's why a strong Spider-Man opening matters beyond the popcorn count. It's a signal to Disney's board, its theater partners and its streaming arm that audiences will still leave the couch for the right movie.
What we don't have yet: the exact dollar figure for the opening, or how it breaks down between domestic and international markets. BBC Business did not publish those numbers in the reporting available to us, and we won't guess at them.
For workers up and down the chain — theater staff, visual-effects houses, marketing contractors — a hit weekend means fuller shifts and steadier contracts, at least for a while. For Disney shareholders, it's a down payment on the bigger question: whether Doomsday can do the same, at an even larger scale.
Somebody's paying for this. Let's find out who.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Business.
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