Could Spider-Man: No Way Home Become the Biggest Movie Ever?

Though a rise in COVID-19 cases are keeping many away from movie theaters, Spider-Man: No Way Home continues to dominate the worldwide box office and break records almost every day. Earlier today the film officially became Sony Pictures' highest grossing movie of all-time and it's quickly becoming one of the biggest hits in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. The amount of money the film has brought in, and the way that it's playing like it has almost no competition, might have some fans wondering, could Spider-Man: No Way Home become the biggest movie of all-time? Let's consider the facts and box office statistics below.

As of this writing, Spider-Man: No Way Home has brought in $516.4 million at the domestic box office and $644.9 million internationally, giving it a global total of $1.16 billion and making it the biggest movie of the year worldwide. The film has managed to amass this total after just twelve days, and it's already surpassed Spider-Man: Far From Home's $1.13 billion worldwide gross which took it about two and a half months to achieve. When we consider the competition that No Way Home faces in its journey up and through the box office record book, we must no doubt take the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic into account but there are also a host of other records that it will almost certainly hold by the time its theatrical exhibition concludes in a few months.

For starters lets put up Spider-Man: No Way Home's box office success against some of the biggest hits in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the first twelve days of its release (the amount of data we currently have for No Way Home), Avengers: Endgame had brought in $644.5 million while Avengers: Infinity War had brought in $472 million and Black Panther had totaled $412 million. When looking at these twelve day totals for these Marvel movies and then considering their entire domestic haul, Avengers: Endgame had brought in 75% of its US total ($858 million), Avengers: Infinity War had brought in 69.5% of its domestic total ($678.8 million), and Black Panther just 58.8% of its domestic total ($700 million); this just goes to show how monstrous the legs were on the 2018 solo movie. 

Putting Spider-Man: No Way Home up against those other movies it seems to be performing more like an Avengers movie, which makes since considering how the third act of the film ends up going. Let's just guess that the $516.4 million that it has already grossed in the US will end up being 70%, or the bulk, of its domestic box office, that would end up putting the film at around $738 million domestically, which would make it the new #4 movie in the US All-Time and the #2 movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

Perhaps however it's not fair to compare Spider-Man: No Way Home's percentages to the two biggest Avengers movies and Black Panther, those were released in the summer and in February after all, while No Way Home is playing to a Christmas audience. The closest thing to the film's success by that metric then are the Disney released Star Wars movies. No Way Home has already surpassed Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and seems to be on track to beat Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Those three movies had longer legs than the summer tent poles with their 12 day totals encompassing 64% of The Force Awakens' total, 68% of The Last Jedi's total, and 60% of The Rise of Skywalker's total. If No Way Home ends up performing more like this, it would push it over $800 million at the domestic box office when all is said and done.

This, again, seems unlikely due to the dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases, forcing us to, ahem, ponder the question, what if this movie had been released in December when there wasn't a worldwide pandemic? Considering that, it seems incredibly likely that it could have competed with Avengers: Endgame and Avatar for the top spots.

All that number gibberish behind us now it is a little hard to think of No Way Home as becoming the biggest movie of all time. As of this writing there are five movies with over $2 billion at the worldwide box office, so Spider-Man will need to nearly double what it already has to even think about taking the top spot. The one thing that is working in its favor to do that? An official release date in China.

Spider-Man: No Way Home has already achieved its many box office benchmarks without being released in China but it does seem like it's on track to debut there. Sometimes it's difficult to predict the patterns of film goers in the Chinese market, the most recent Star Wars movies failed to gain any ground there while Avengers: Endgame brought in $629 million. Looking at Tom Holland's two previous movies, Spider-Man: Homecoming made $118.8 million despite being released later in China while Spider-Man: Far From Home launched to over $205 million thanks to an early release. With a later debut it's hard to say if No Way Home will clear its predecessor's total, especially with rampant piracy, but any boost from the Chinese box office will be a major help to the movie landing close to the Top of the All-Time Worldwide box office.

Where do you think Spider-Man: No Way Home will end up at the box office when all is said and done? Let us know in the comments below.