Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Outperforming The MCU
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had a larger opening day than this year's MCU releases.
Just when Marvel thought it couldn’t get any worse, they lost a record to another superhero studio, using their own characters. After releasing Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, it seemed like 2023 would continually underperform for superheroes, but yesterday’s drop of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse single-handedly destroyed the competition. According to Deadline, the film is collecting the bragging rights of the biggest box office opener of 2023 to date, bringing in a whopping $51.7 million on its first day in theaters.
To give you an idea of how incredible Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s web is, it completely engulfed the final installment of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, which landed an opening day total of $48.1 million and stomped out the animated Super Mario Bros. But wait, there’s more.
Many of us will remember the box office sensation that was the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man: No Way Home, which saw the return of not only Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s web slingers but also villains from the past franchises. While No Way Home is still holding steady as Spidey’s biggest opening with $121.9 million, Across the Spider-Verse is seated in third place for all of Peter Parker’s opening days, just behind Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, which landed $59.8 million.
With such a long list of films from Marvel’s Queens-based hero, this means that the animated feature beat out title,s including Spider-Man: Homecoming and its sequel Far From Home, Maguire’s first and second times under the mask in Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 and the films led by Andrew Garfield. It is smashing other titles in the same realm and going down in history as the third-highest opening day for an animated film, just behind Finding Dory and Incredibles 2.
It’s been five years since audiences were first introduced to Miles Morales in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The Sony feature saw a new web spun by the computer-animated film that saw the teenager seek out the help of other Spider-people (and Ham) to save the multiverse. Introduced to a multitude of different web shooters, the film was an instant hit among fans of the MCU.
Quickly seeing that they had another spider-rific hit on their hands, Sony moved forward with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which picks up following the first movie’s events. On another multiverse-hopping adventure, Miles and Gwen Stacy come into contact with even more Spider-People, who all have their own unique ways of doing things. Starring an A-list voice cast, the film features the talents of Shameik Moore, Oscar Isaac, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Vélez, Jake Johnson, Jason Schwartzman, Issa Rae, Karan Soni, Daniel Kaluuya, Rachel Dratch, Kimiko Glenn, Mahershala Ali, Amandla Stenberg, Andy Samberg, and more.
Already 2023’s biggest box office hit, it will be interesting to see how Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse holds its own over the summer. With major blockbusters coming out, including The Flash, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, we’ll see if Spidey has the staying power to maintain its top spot.
