Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: The Opening Weekend Box Office and the Outlook for the Long-Term Domestic and Worldwide Gross

Earlier this year I wondered if Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse might not outperform every other Marvel superhero movie, or even every other superhero movie, coming out this year.

Three days into its release it its outperforming Guardians of the Galaxy 3 domestically, with, much closer to the high than the low end of Boxoffice Pro's projection ($95-$130 million), over $120 million grossed.

Will the movie maintain its lead over Star-Lord and friends? Certainly its opening, as not just a sequel but perhaps the most anticipated movie of the summer, suggests front-loading. However, the enthusiasm seems real enough, and people seem to be liking what they were seeing--with 96 percent scores from both the "verified" and "all" audiences on Rotten Tomatoes (matched by ratings almost as good from the critics, both "all" and "top" critics giving it a 95 percent rating). The result is that the movie seems to me to still have a fair chance of besting Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (with its gross now standing at $322 million), and in the process just about every superhero movie coming out this year except, possibly, Aquaman 2 (though Across the Spider-Verse besting it too seems within the realm of possibility should the film prove the disappointment some fear).

Still, the margins are for the time being slender enough that the film's hold over the next two weeks will be critical in determining that outcome.

Internationally the debut has been less impressive--the film scoring $88 million so far--which is respectable, but not quite the same level of success. (Indeed, Across the Spider-Verse made a third less in its debut in China than its predecessor did--in current dollars.) It may be too soon to claim too much on that basis, but it may be that enthusiasm for the animated Spiderman feature film franchise did not explode globally the way it has at home. The result is that the film's performance will not hit the highs globally that it does at home, with all that implies for the film's final gross, and its ultimate significance from the standpoint of Hollywood fashion.