Following a spate of glowing reviews across the trades this week, Sony Pictures Animation can toast a heroic theatrical debut for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Highly praised by critics and eagerly awaited by fans, the sequel is ready to spin a strong web around box offices this weekend, with the studio reporting a $17.35 million Thursday preview night take.
This impressive figure sets Across the Spider-Verse up as the second best preview night performer for an animated feature, just behind Disney-Pixar’s Incredibles 2 — which previewed at $18.5M and went on to earn $1.24 billion worldwide — and bumping Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story 4 to the No. 3 spot ($12M) for this particular ranking.
The original pic, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which shook up not only expectations for animated features but also superhero flicks in any medium, previewed at $3.5M in 2018, totting up a $35.3M three-day opening and a $384.3M worldwide total. This ambitious experiment went on to sweep awards season, picking up the Best Animated Feature honors from the Academy Awards, Golden Globs, Critics’ Choice Awards and Annie Awards, where it also swooped six additional Outstanding Achievement honors.
Across the Spider-Verse is playing just as well with early audiences as it did with critics, boasting a 97% audience score and 96% critics’ Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. Moviegoers polled by Comscore’s PostTrak Thursday night gave the pic five stars.
All in all, things look rosy for Miles Morales and co. as it looks like it will have a $40 million Friday, and a $100 million three-day total in 4,314 theaters nationwide. It remains to be seen if or how quickly this summer swinger catches up to Universal/Illumination’s spring blockbuster, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which currently ranks as the No. 1 movie of the year both domestically ($562.38M) and worldwide ($1.284B).
[Source: Deadline]
