‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Hoping To Catch Opening In The $100M Vicinity

EXCLUSIVE: Sony’s Spider-Man: Homecoming hit tracking today and is projected to have an opening between $90M-$108M when it opens on July 7.

This is according to industry tracking, not Sony.

Like most superhero movies outside of Wonder Woman, Homecoming is especially strong with young males right now, “but strong across the board” according to one rival studio box office guru. We’re hearing that the movie truly stokes families.

Again, these estimates can fluctuate up or down as we get closer to opening. Tickets are already on sale on Fandango, Atom and Movietickets.com.

If Sony is able to clear $100M, it would be a great boost for live-action franchise tentpoles this summer at the domestic B.O. which have been getting quite a beating, read The Mummy, Alien: Covenant, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Comic-book movies on the other hand have been blessed and the ongoing anomaly with the opening of Disney/Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($146.5M) beating its original’s debut by 55%. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman has started a brand new tentpole series all together for Warner Bros. with a $103.3M start. Paramount’s upcoming Transformers: The Last Knight isn’t expected to do the domestic box office any favors with the series lowest opening yet of $70M over five days.

Homecoming is an important reboot of Spider-Man: For Sony, it’s third time’s a charm with the franchise following the original Sam Raimi reboots and the lesser so Marc Webb Amazing Spider-Mans from 2012 and 2014 (though the latter did still clear a $70M profit after all ancillaries). Amazing Spider-Man 2 cost before P&A $255M and Homecoming is considerably less in the upper $100M range similar to other Marvel titles. Sony really needs a mega hit, its last live-action one arguably being 2015’s Spectre ($200M stateside, $880.8M worldwide). All together, Sony’s five Spider-Man movies have grossed $3.96 billion at the worldwide box office. Jon Watts, the director of the Kevin Bacon indie film Cop Car, helmed Homecoming. 

In addition, what’s special about Homecoming is that it finally incorporates itself in the greater Disney/Marvel superhero cinematic universe — and that truly means a great deal for fans and enables Spider-Man to star alongside current MCU characters. Last summer, the current version of Spider-man played by Tom Holland made a cameo in Disney/Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War fighting on Iron Man’s side, and he’ll star in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War which is opening next summer on May 4. Because of the way Marvel rights were sold well before the comic-book label made movies on its own with Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Avengers, Sony wound up taking options back in 1999 to all previous Spider-man scripts developed by MGM.

In 2002, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man reignited superhero movies in the wake of Warner Bros.’ then waning Batman series. While Universal’s 1999 Brendan Fraser Mummy movie showed that there was an appetite among moviegoers for a tentpole during the first weekend of May (with then a big $43.3M opening), Spider-Man blew the roofs off multiplexes with a stunning $114.8M opening (which still ranks as the 9th best for the month). As many in distribution like to say, it was Sony’s then distribution czar Jeff Blake who moved Memorial Day weekend to the first weekend of May. Raimi’s Spider-Man together with Bryan Singer’s X-Men raised the stakes of superhero movie storytelling, creating a rampway to the critically acclaimed Marvel box office hits we see today.

Among all of Sony’s Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man 3 posted the biggest three-day opening of $151.1M at the domestic B.O.  It’s also the biggest one in the series worldwide with $890.9M while the 2002 Spider-Man is the biggest earner at the domestic B.O. with $403.7M.

On ComScore’s social media index PreAct, Spider-Man: Homecoming, was the second-most buzzed about title during the week ending June 11 after Marvel’s Black Panther which dropped its teaser trailer.