'Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse' Scores Massive Opening Weekend

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse was one of the most acclaimed animated features of the 2010s. It opened to near universal praise from critics and went on to win numerous awards including the Oscar and BAFTA for Best Animated Film. Despite that, its box office performance lagged some way behind that of the live-action Spider-Man films.

Now the sequel Across The Spider-Verse is here, and it's already surpassing its predecessor. Arriving on a wave of hype the second film has arrived to a massive $120.5 million opening weekend in North America. This is the second biggest opening of the year so far- behind only The Super Mario Bros Movie, and the third biggest opening weekend for a Spider-Man film. This was also a new record for a Sony Pictures Animation film. Presales on tickets were considerably ahead of the first movie.

The film opened well ahead of Studio and Box Office experts' predictions. In comparison, the first film took $35.5 million in its opening weekend, going on to take $190 million domestically and $384 worldwide. The first film was considered a success (enough to greenlight a sequel) but was someway behind the box-office haul of the live-action Spider-Man films- the most recent two of which both took over a billion dollars.

Positive word-of-mouth should see the film stick around for a while and should see it overtake its predecessor's lifetime haul in no time.

Internationally, Across The Spider-Verse took in an additional $88.1 million from 59 territories in its opening weekend. This is led by China with $17.3 million, taking the film's total haul to $208.6 million.

Meanwhile, the Super Mario Bros Movie has bounced its way to $1.3 billion, overtaking Frozen to become the second highest grossing animated film of all time. 2023 is definitely shaping up be quite the year for animation- and we're only halfway through!

[source]