Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Superhero & Comic Sony PG 2h 20m Released Jun 2, 2023 Discussed 2023–2024
Opening weekend
$120.7M
4,313 theaters
Per-theater average
$27,977
opening weekend
Domestic total
$381.6M
3.2× its opening
Worldwide total
$690.8M
55% domestic
Production budget
$100.0M
6.9× worldwide
RT critics
95%
RT audience
95%
0 vs critics
Metacritic
86
Where it turns up
Friday, June 2, 2023 First weekend of June 2023
On the chart Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (opening): $120.7M
Expected 'I'll stay pretty conservative here and say it's around $100 million, but if this holds up tonight it will soar past that' Actual: $120.7M, it soared
In the note
Success after risk can lead to other success (although it seems like it's the 2nd time that pays off, the first time is just a primer), and hopefully this emboldens the green light committees in the business to take some chances on films that look a little differently. Anyway, with the accuracy associated with the motto on the Sackler Family Crest, primum gustum est liber, here are some thoughts on the weekend box office. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Part 1 - This is clearly very good, and the satisfaction with the first film is showing up today big time.
Friday, June 9, 2023 Second weekend of June 2023
On the chart Across the Spider-Verse (wk 2): $55.5M, -54%
Expected 'Wonder Woman only dropped 43%... say this has a similar drop and finishes in the low 60's' Actual: $55.5M, -54%
In the note
And since Optimus Prime is still mumbling the same doom and gloom bullshit he’s been mumbling for the last 15 years, this is an exceptional job of Marketing, especially considering the elements they were given. Anyway, based on the fuzzy recollection of the contents of documents that were lost in the server room flood at Mar-a-Lago, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse - The exceptional playability is showing here and the 2nd Friday drop looks a lot like the 2nd Friday drop of Wonder Woman.
Friday, June 16, 2023 Father's Day weekend 2023
On the chart Across the Spider-Verse (wk 3): $27.0M, -51%
Expected 'Figure a drop of about 45% and a 3 day around 30' Actual: $27.0M, -51%
In the note
But just like everything in this business, the prediction of the Rotten Tomatoes score is virtually impossible and if they had any inkling that they wouldn’t have the usual mid/high 90’s on RT, they might have approached this differently. Right now this looks like a 3 day in the mid 30’s and a 4 day in the low 40’s. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Considering all the new films in the marketplace, this is holding up pretty good.
Friday, June 23, 2023 Fourth weekend of June 2023
On the chart Across the Spider-Verse (wk 4): $19.0M, -30%
In the note
When we looked at how the summer tentpoles were going to line up this summer, we anticipated that this would be a week that would be a little bit of a break. But it’s considerably worse than we thought because normally a good DC film and a June Pixar film in their 2nd weekend should carry us through, but both of those ran into considerable headwinds (more on that below). The weekend should still break $100 million, but not by much, and it will be short of the Elvis/Black Phone weekend last year and about half of the Toy Story 4/Child’s Play weekend of 2019. But we’ll get back on track next week and July should be a great month, highlighted by the upcoming cage match between Barbie and Oppenheimer mid July. So, the Academy is now Nielsen. When I worked at Nielsen, their take on ‘innovation’ looked something like this; they would take the same tired product/idea that had been around forever, make some cosmetic changes, slap a new name on it and then drop a press release about how innovative they were and were showing how they were keeping up with the industry. We’re still seeing that these days from them, as the consumer migrates away from linear TV and they keep rolling out the same stuff with cosmetic changes and different names, but it was still the same crap they’d been peddling and didn’t address the needs of their customers. This week the Academy announced their long gestating ’solution’ to the films that play in theaters, but the theatrical run is just there to check a box for awards eligibility; and all the marketing muscle is allocated towards watching them on a platform. And in too many cases there is considerably more marketing muscle put towards the awards push than either the theatrical run or the platform release. And what did those changes sum up to? Nothing (similar to the ’solution' a couple of weeks ago to the Andrea Risenborough issue, which was also a big nothing), the same problem will exist and all the changes were angled towards looking like they were doing something, but actually didn’t really change a thing. Why didn’t it change a thing? Even though the issue was apparently discussed at length, they aren’t going to require films to report their grosses to be eligible for Oscars. Now you would think, 'what's the big deal?' If they're not leaning into the theatrical experience (and some content leaders have been very upfront about what their intentions are), why do they care? There have been a lot of award winners that didn't do well at the box office, including Best Picture Winners like The Hurt Locker, why would anyone push back?' But just like everything else today, it’s all about the money. First, let’s talk about how these decisions get made. Obviously the higher ups at the Academy are well meaning and (to get to where they are) they’ve been in the business for a while. But, just like a lot of people that sit on boards, they don’t know all the nooks and crannies of the business and they’re subject to lobbying, and often their opinions are based on the last person they talked to. So the policies that are coming down are probably the agenda successes of the voices in their ears. If they had required all films eligible for the feature length categories to report their grosses, some of the content generators would have had to reallocate financial resources to get people to theaters. And where would that money come from? More than likely it would come out of budgets that find their way to the Industrial Awards complex. As I said above, there are several of the Award contenders from this last awards year that spent more on the Awards campaign than they did on getting normal civilians to watch it. So if they have to start caring about people watching movies in theaters, the beneficiaries will be digital and TV (and the associated agencies), and the losers would be the Industrial Awards Complex. But there’s another reason that they’re going to continue to allow grosses to be suppressed; unfortunately it’s a big picture issue linked to the same issues the WGA (and soon SAG/AFTRA) are dealing with, and I’m pretty sure a lot of lobbying went into the decision. There’s a pretty solid financial reason the streamers don’t report grosses for their theatrical runs. It’s not like they hate theaters or anything like that, it’s that they’ve built a whole financial model on a ‘buy it now’ one time price for talent, and any transparency on revenues could lead to changing deals to include backend. They want to avoid that, they really don’t want that, and they’ve gone out of their way to lock down any measurement metrics to stop that from happening. The way the streamers have found a loophole in the guild deals that bring their talent costs down significantly over the life of a project, any crack in that door would change their model, and they like their model. As you’ve heard over and over again during the WGA strike, the income level for non-star writers on streamer projects is one of the key drivers in this strike. So, unfortunately the Academy could have done a two-fer here. They could have created a level headed rule that would have separated the truly theatrical films from the flicks that were just checking a box, plus they might have helped the two Guilds who’s fights are tied to revenue transparency. But since the Actors Branch is the largest branch of the Academy and the Writer's Branch is substantial as well, the Academy chose to bury their heads in the sand instead of looking out for a good part of its membership. And burying their heads in the sand is something Nielsen has been doing for a long long time. Anyway, with the accuracy normally associated with NewsNation's Titanic Sub oxygen countdown clock, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office. We’ve got a little bit of a box-office derby here, and it’s possible Spider-Man, Elemental, The Flash or No Hard Feelings could win the weekend, but here’s my best guess based on what I’m seeing right now. Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse - Looks like DC’s loss is Marvel’s gain here.
Friday, June 30, 2023 Final weekend of June 2023
On the chart Across the Spider-Verse (wk 5): $12.0M, -37%
Expected 'They should both be down about 35% for a weekend of about $12 million' each Actual: $12.0M (-37%) and $12.1M (-34%)
In the note
For now, let’s say any shortfall tonight and tomorrow gets made up by the extra runs and I'll say it should end up in the low 60’s. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse/Elemental - Same same as last weekend, both running about the same level and they should both be down about 35% for a weekend of about $12 million. Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken - Back when they folded DreamWorks Animation and Illumination together, I had lunch with a friend working at DWA, he told me the combination wasn’t going well because the DWA folks saw themselves as Animation Artiste’s and thought the Illumination people were a bunch of hacks.
Thursday, July 13, 2023 Mission: Impossible Wednesday, July 2023
In the note
Transformers week 1 vs Spider-verse week 2) for cosmetic purposes.
Thursday, August 3, 2023 Turtles Wednesday, August 2023
In the note
Another Wednesday opening today, and we’ll see if it works out this time, since it didn’t work out that great for Mission: Impossible. Today is good on the Spider-Verse adjacent Teenage Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (look wise anyway), but the next couple of days will be the real test.
Friday, June 7, 2024 First weekend of June 2024
In the note
Friday, June 14, 2024 Father's Day weekend 2024
In the note
Friday, September 20, 2024 Third weekend of September 2024
In the note
5 years ago, Sony/Marvel went that route with Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse and it opened……okay. But because it was a movie people loved and played and played (and won the Best Animated Film Oscar), it laid the groundwork for the next chapter. And the next chapter, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opened a little better than okay at $123 million.
Friday, December 13, 2024 Second weekend of December 2024
In the note
But there’s another component that was key to it achieving the outlier status it got to over Christmas, Disney kind of sat out that Christmas (well, they had Mary Poppins, but same same), and there were a couple of IP rebuilds like Spider Verse and Bumblebee, so the competitive landscape around it wasn’t terribly challenging.