Spider-Man: No Way Home breaks box office records, everything else bombs

Spider-Man has no way home’s gangbusters weekend reshaped the collective imagination on what a movie could do during the turbulent pandemic moment, with projections showing the new Marvel/Sony movie earned $260 million from Dec. 17 through 19. That’s a whole lot of money. There is no way home It is competing with the pre-pandemic past, pushing forward Avengers: Infinity War To become the 2nd-largest opening in history.

That’s all well and good for Peter Parker. But how about all the other people?

If all the friendly neighborhood Spider-Men vacated the box office, the weekend’s numbers would look positively dismal. In second place was Disney’s EncantoThe animated musical with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, ‘The Musical,’ has already been seen in theatres for just a few weeks and earned $6.5 million. Steven Spielberg is still sleeping. West Side Story The resounding musical remake made $3.4million, which is a drop of 68 percent from previous weeks.

And finally, here Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is rolling after its pre-Thanksgiving release, is the other new movie this week: Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley With $2.9 million Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett are among the many highlights. There is no way home’s Willem Defoe, del Toro’s noirish re-imagining of a 1947 movie about a con man moving his way through a carnival and society has been at the center of Oscar buzz.

Kerry Hayes, 20th Century Studios

However, wide-opening against There is no way home The real problem has been ticket sales. Some theatres are reporting that they’ve seen ticket sales drop so much, Nightmare Alley To open more screens Spider-Man. This failure was so glaring that some on TwitterThey claim that Disney owns the property Nightmare distributor Searchlight Pictures, and also oversaw the disastrous release of October’s The Last DuelThey are setting their movies up for failure.

According to Frank Rodriquez, SVP general sales manager at Searchlight Pictures, they weren’t thinking of Spider-Man None. Deadline is told by Rodriquez West Side Story It was believed that it actually was Nightmare’s main competition, and that “nobody thought Spider-Man would be this big.” To his point, The Numbers, an independent website that tracks box office numbers, predicted There is no way home would hit $153 million in it’s opening weekend. Actual numbers show a rise of 165 percent.

“The hope is that after people have seen Spider-ManYou might choose to take them to see films like Nightmare Alley,” Rodriquez says. “It’s not just arthouse, it really is a four-quadrant film able to play in upscale multiplexes, mainstream locations, and even urban markets.” Once the awards season gets into full swing, a nomination for Cooper or del Toro could swing things around.

Del Toro was there before. During its first week of wide release, 2017’s Water Shape Opened with slightly lower numbers than Nightmare Alley With over $3,000,000 After the Oscar nominations weekend on January 23, 2018, which was attended by 3 million people, where Water The film won all the nominations. It had the most successful weekend ever with $5.9million. The Best Picture-winner would make more than $60 million in the U.S. A turnaround is possible though The Shape of Water’s $20 million budget was only a third of Nightmare Alley’s reported $60 million price tag, making the situation more pronounced.

Data from PostTrac movie exit pollster PostTrac shows that men younger than 25 years old are most comfortable going back to the theater right now. 44% of these men feel comfortable returning to the big-screen at the moment. This number is doubled to 88% among those who have been vaccinated. They’re followed by men over 25, who are comfortable returning to the movies in 38 percent in general and 74 percent vaccinated. Following suit are women below 25 years of age (34%, 84%) and over 25-years (30%, 74%).

The older audience is less interested in films beyond their 25th birthday. Speaking to AARP Magazine, David Herrin of the film-tracking data company The Quorum says “about 44 percent of the over-50 crowd say they feel safe. For the general public, it was closer to 62 percent.” Over-50s, who generally seek out Oscar fare more, feel less safe in theaters than under-25s. These realities seem to be reflected in the box office for now.

Quorum published a study that looked at ways to bring people back into theatres. It suggested improved experiences like greater space between seats. The outlook isn’t hopeless for the non-action-oriented theater attendee, but the numbers at the moment are certainly grim for anything resembling blockbuster counter-programming.