Spider-Man pulls off the hat trick. For the third weekend in a row, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the biggest movie at the domestic box office, and it wasn’t particularly close. Even with several new releases arriving and The Odyssey continuing to draw a crowd, Peter Parker stayed right where he’s been since opening weekend: on top.
According to Variety, Spider-Man: Brand New Day brought in another $70 million over the weekend. That pushes its North American total to roughly $785 million, while the worldwide number has now crossed $2 billion. Yes, billion with a “B.” Twice.
The Sony and Marvel blockbuster has become one of those movies where the numbers almost stop looking real after a while. Three weekends into its run, audiences are still showing up in huge numbers, and Spider-Man continues to set the pace for everyone else.
Spider-Man Pulls a Hat Trick While The Odyssey Holds Strong
If Spider-Man owns the top spot, The Odyssey has made a pretty comfortable home right behind it. Christopher Nolan’s epic earned another $23.2 million during its fifth weekend, bringing its North American total to about $504.6 million. Worldwide, the movie has reached roughly $1.29 billion.
That’s quite a run for a nearly three-hour movie based on a story that’s been around for thousands of years. On paper, The Odyssey doesn’t sound like the easiest summer blockbuster to sell. In theaters, that hasn’t mattered much.
Matt Damon leads the movie as Odysseus, with Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron filling out an enormous cast. There’s also a funny little connection at the top of the weekend box office: Tom Holland appears in both of its two biggest movies.
Not a bad summer.
The Summer Box Office Isn’t Slowing Down Yet
August usually feels like the part of summer where everyone starts packing up. Movie theaters apparently didn’t get that memo.
Domestic summer ticket sales have already crossed the $4 billion mark, with the total sitting around $4.24 billion from the beginning of May through the middle of August. That’s well ahead of where the industry stood at the same point last summer.
The bigger story may be how many different kinds of movies are contributing. Spider-Man draws the superhero crowd, The Odyssey has become an event movie and new releases are still finding room even with those two giants sitting at the top.
For all the talk in recent years about whether audiences still want to go to theaters, this summer has provided a pretty simple answer when the right movies come along. They go.
The End of Oak Street Gets Its Turn
One of the weekend’s biggest newcomers was The End of Oak Street. The Warner Bros. sci-fi thriller opened with about $21 million domestically and added another $26 million overseas, giving it a worldwide start of roughly $46 million.
Now comes the part that matters. The movie reportedly cost around $80 million to make, so opening weekend was never going to tell the entire story. What happens over the next couple of weeks will probably give us a much better idea of where this one ultimately lands.
David Robert Mitchell, who previously directed It Follows, wrote and directed the film. The setup is wonderfully strange. A suburban family’s normal life suddenly disappears when their neighborhood somehow ends up in prehistoric times.
Anne Hathaway stars alongside Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery and Jordan Alexa Davis.
Spider-Man Draws Crowds As PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie Gets Families Into Theaters
Kids had something new waiting for them too. PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie opened with approximately $20.5 million domestically, putting it very close to the kind of opening the franchise has delivered before.
Its worldwide total has already climbed to around $69 million. That gives Paramount something to build on as the movie heads into the rest of its theatrical run.
Family movies can be funny at the box office. They don’t necessarily need everyone rushing out on opening night. If kids like them and convince their parents to go, they can keep pulling in audiences for weeks.
Spider-Man stays on top for now, but PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie doesn’t need Spider-Man numbers to have a successful run of its own.
Katseye: Wild Hearts Finds Its Crowd
Then there’s Katseye: Wild Hearts, which is playing an entirely different game. The documentary earned around $3.8 million over the weekend as fans of the global girl group turned out to see them on the big screen.
Obviously, nobody is comparing that number to what Spider-Man pulls in. They shouldn’t.
For a music documentary aimed at a specific fanbase, finding enough of an audience to hang around the upper part of the weekend box office is its own accomplishment.
Broadway Joins The Weekend Mix
Six: The Musical Live also made its way into theaters, earning approximately $3 million. The filmed Broadway production is another example of something we’ve been seeing more often lately: stage shows getting a second life on movie screens.
Hadestown recently found an audience using the same idea. Maybe there’s something here.
Not everyone can get to New York and see a Broadway production in person. Putting those shows in theaters gives people another way in, and movie theaters get something completely different to put on their screens.
That’s a pretty good trade.
Spider-Man Pulls a Hat Trick With Third Weekend On Top
There were other new arrivals as well. The Brink of War features Jeff Daniels as Ronald Reagan and Jared Harris as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, while Matthew McConaughey returned to theaters in The Rivals of Amziah King.
One Night Only continued its run too, although its second weekend proved tougher than its first. Still, all roads lead back to the same movie.
Spider-Man pulls a hat trick at the weekend box office, The Odyssey is somehow still going strong five weekends later and August looks a whole lot busier than the final weeks of summer usually do.
Peter Parker has the crown again. Now we’ll see if anybody can finally take it from him.
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