By: Russ Burlingame on July 3, 2012
Last night’s midnight screenings of The Amazing Spider-Man brought in $7.5 million for the Sony reboot, putting it roughly on pace to meet its projections of $100 million to $150 million for the Fourth of July “weekend”, according to Box Office Mojo.
The film’s opening was roughly on par with both Iron Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, the latter of which made $151 million in its opening weekend and was at the time the highest-grossing opening weekend ever. It’s since been beaten a few times, including by the last big Marvel superhero movie, May’s The Avengers, which made more than $18 million at its midnight screenings en route to a $207 million opening weekend.
Of course, with kids out of school and higher ticket prices (especially in IMAX and 3D theaters), a similar draw means that fewer people actually saw The Amazing Spider-Man last night than did in the same period for Spider-Man 3, and that it’s probably a bit of a letdown for Sony. With the film opening bigger than The Avengers in some foreign markets, they were likely hoping to make at least the $10 million mark…but it’s still a far cry better than Men in Black 3, Sony’s last major release, which made only $1.5 million on midnight shows before going on to take the weekend with around $55 million.
Men in Black 3, of course, had its midnight screenings on a more conventional Thursday night/Friday morning, whereas the desire to open before the Fourth of July pushed The Amazing Spider-Man to the oddball Monday night shows. It’s being widely speculated that move might have hurt the midnight screenings but will inflate the overall number for the first-week gross, a number that’s far more important to the studio.
The Amazing Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Denis Leary, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. It’s in theaters now. You can read ComicBook.com‘s official review here.
