“Spider-Man 3” gave new meaning to the term “worldwide web” this weekend, snaring $375 million in ticket sales in a record display of Hollywood’s global reach.
Fans from 107 countries lined up for Peter Parker’s third outing, which shattered the previous opening-weekend mark by 48 percent and launched the movie industry’s extended summer season in blockbuster style.
“Spider-Man 3” crushed the North American record with an estimated $148 million in the U.S. and Canada alone, topping last summer’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” And it piled up unprecedented opening numbers in Japan, South Korea, India, Russia, Italy, Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere.
“In your deepest, darkest, most secret desires you could never expect it to do so well,” said Amy Pascal, Sony’s studio chairman.
“We’re floating.” The results come as encouraging news to an industry looking for a string of summer popcorn movies – including such sequels as “Shrek the Third” in two weeks, “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” on Memorial Day weekend and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” in July – to lift this year’s domestic box-office results above $10 billion for the first time.
Even more important is the financial impact such films can register internationally at a time when foreign ticket sales account for 63 percent of the world market, up from 50 percent five years ago.
More than four out of every five moviegoers around the world this weekend went to see “Spider-Man 3,” which had the widest release of any film in history.
The previous record worldwide gross for an opening weekend was set by “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” at $254 million in 2005. In the U.S. and Canada only, “Pirates” had set the standard with a $136 million three-day launch.
“Spider-Man 3,” in which Toby Maguire’s character is reunited with love interest Kirsten Dunst, cost about $400 million to produce and release. But Sony declared the expensive gamble a success.
“If anything makes the dollars we spend to make and market these big movies make sense, it’s the one-world approach,” said Jeff Blake, Sony’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution. “It’s no longer just a question of, ‘How did it do at the Mann Village in Westwood?’ ” “Spider-Man 3” came none too soon for Hollywood, as overall weekend results had been sluggish for three consecutive weeks. The industry’s summer slate got off on the wrong foot in 2005 when the epic “Kingdom of Heaven” flopped, and last year’s season opener, “Mission: Impossible III,” fell shy of lofty expectations.
Industry ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada surged 73 percent from the same weekend a year ago, thanks to “Spider-Man 3,” and year-to-date they are running 6 percent ahead of 2006, according to research firm Media by Numbers.
The “Spider-Man,” “Shrek” and “Pirates” sequels are expected to turbocharge this month’s results, while studios are banking on productions such as “Potter,” “Transformers,” “Ratatouille” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” to carry the rest of the summer.
“Spider-Man 3” benefited from the soft competition in the marketplace.
Also working in its favor was the wide release pattern: The movie slung into a record 4,253 theaters in the U.S. and Canada, and an unprecedented number of other territories as well.
Even so, the PG-13 rated film earned the highest per-theater average ever in North America for a broad release – $34,807.
“Spider-Man 3,” which also set single-day marks with the industry’s biggest Friday, Saturday and Sunday grosses, could claim more records, as no other heavyweight releases are due until DreamWorks Animation’s “Shrek the Third” comes out May 18.
The weekend’s other releases were overwhelmed at the box office.
Warner Bros. counter-programmed with the romantic comedy “Lucky You,” starring Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana, but it managed only $2.5 million in the U.S. and Canada.
