Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home pre-sales are reaching new heights for the country’s top exhibition circuits. With the upcoming release of the new Spider-Man film, Cinemark, the third-largest cinema chain in the United States, has reported the second-highest advance ticket sales for a single title in their history.
Fandango reported that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” shattered its pre-sale records for 2021, beating out Marvel’s “Black Widow.” It’s keeping up with films that debuted before COVID-19, resulting in Fandango’s best first-day advance ticket sales since 2019’s superhero smash “Avengers: Endgame” (which eventually debuted to a mind-boggling $357 million). “No Way Home” is actually outperforming blockbuster titles like “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” on Fandango.
Though “No Way Home” is expected to have a strong domestic start, the news of strong pre-sales does not guarantee that Holland’s latest “Spider-Man” adventure will beat — or even match — the opening weekend totals for “Infinity War” ($258 million domestic debuts), “The Last Jedi” ($220 million domestic debuts), or “The Rise of Skywalker” ($177 million domestic debuts). Purchasing movie stubs ahead of time indicates strong anticipation among the property’s core fanbase, but it does not always translate to opening-weekend box office records. For example, Fandango reported in October that pre-sales for “No Time to Die,” the latest James Bond sequel, were outpacing “F9: The Fast Saga,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” and “Spectre” at the same point in their sales cycles. “No Time to Die” grossed $55 million in its first weekend. There are several reasons for film industry insiders to be optimistic about “No Way Home.” At a time when superhero stories have never been more popular, Spider-Man is unquestionably the most popular Spandexed vigilante to star in a feature film in 2021. “Shang-Chi” ($75 million domestic debuts) and “Eternals” ($71 million domestic debuts) were both on Marvel fans’ radars, but their respective title characters were not yet household names. In comparison, almost everyone on the planet has heard of Spider-Man. In what is expected to be the biggest crossover event since “Avengers: Endgame,” director Jon Watts managed to include villains from previous “Spider-Man” franchises such as Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin and Jamie Foxx’s Electro. It’s a call sheet that will make fans salivate.