The Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy came full circle in December, but its box office numbers haven’t stopped going up since. A couple of weeks ago, it broke the record for the highest-grossing film during the pandemic; today, it’s among one of the greatest films in film history.
After the first weekend of January, Spider-Man: No Way Home had already surpassed The Avengers (2012) and thus bumped the original Avenger movie down to ninth place among the highest-grossing film ever. As of today, No Way Home nabbed the fifth spot from Avengers: Infinity War and placed itself among the all-time greats of history. Infinity War, the film in which the nihilistic intergalactic supervillain Thanos beat the Avengers and destroyed half of life in the universe with a single snap of his fingers, had been comfortably sitting in fifth place since its release in 2018. With a hefty $678.8 million in the box office, the star-studded team of Marvel heroes did not expect to lose its place less than four years later. It took a little cheating by burrowing two Spider-men and a few senior villains from outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe to beat that box office number, but Spider-Man: No Way Home has now reached a whopping $683 million.
Spider-man’s skyrocketing box office trajectory wasn’t completely unexpected after considering its fantastic opening weekend firstly and secondly the fact that it has barely been slowing down in the weekends after. Whereas many films, such as Black Widow (2021), suffer from a bad second or third weekend with up to a 50% to 60% decrease in movie ticket sales, No Way Home cinema ticket sales barely slowed down 33.7% after New Year’s Eve.
Though still far from Avengers: Endgame (2019) with an astonishing income of $858.3 million, the latest multiversal Spidey adventure took the franchise to new and unexpected heights, especially when recalling how Spider-Man Homecoming merely generated a total of $334 million back in 2017. It may be the end of a trilogy, but given its incredible commercial success, it is unlikely that Disney / Marvel will give the young Tom Holland much time to rest before putting the iconic arachnid suit back on.
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