By: Russ Burlingame on July 7, 2012
In spite of an undercurrent of negativity aimed at the fact that Sony have resumed the Spider-Man series so soon after the third and final Sam Raimi film five years ago, The Amazing Spider-Man has been gathering steam since its Tuesday release and is now on pace to open at around $140 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
That will put the wall-crawler’s return among the top ten opening weekends of all time, but only if you count its six-day total between Monday’s midnight shows and the close of business on Sunday. As far as the weekend itself, most experts are expecting the film to make between $60 million and $75 million.
If these numbers hold, it will mean that while the movie has done objectively well, it will have the third-highest opening of Sony’s four Spider-Man films, beating out Raimi’s first installment (which made around $115 million in its opening frame), but coming in behind the five-day, Fourth of July total for Spider-Man 2 ($152 million) and Spider-Man 3‘s then-record-breaking $151 million opening weekend. If Amazing Spider-Man has a strong opening weekend and swings past $150 million for the six days, it will likely change the conversation somewhat regarding how big of a hit it is, but not a whole lot, considering that any close box office comparison to a five- or ten-year-old movie will draw the inevitable reminder that ticket prices have risen since then, and that 3D has the effect of artificially inflating a film’s take-home.
The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, has opened to mostly positive reviews, although with a Rotten Tomatoes score of onliy 72%, reception has been nowhere near as good as The Avengers got, or as The Dark Knight Rises is expected to get later this summer.
