MCU Spider-Man Just Set A Franchise Record
The Spider-Man franchise has been the most successful, according to box office numbers compiled by Beltway.
Spider-Man can do whatever a spider can, assuming a spider can lay claim to the title of the second-biggest movie franchise of all time. Beltway compiled an exhaustive list of the top twenty blockbuster franchises of all time, and the results are a little shocking. The MCU as a whole came in second behind Spider-Man, while fellow comic book movie universe, the DCEU had to settle for 12th place, between Pirates of the Caribbean and Alien.
Criteria considered for scoring include total box office, award nominations, returning cast members, and multiple types of internet searches. If only the total box office was considered, the MCU would be number one with Spider-Man, shockingly, still in the top five at number 4 behind Harry Potter but ahead of Fast and the Furious.
Fellow Disney property, Star Wars, retains the long-held crown as the most successful franchise of all time, but credit has to be given to the multiple Peter Parker films. Thanks to the sale of the film rights to Sony in 1999, Spider-Man has appeared in more solo films than the rest of his MCU superheroes. Hollywood is currently on its third actor to don the red and blue tights, Tom Holland, with the English star following behind Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire.
Posting some impressive numbers for a down-on-his-luck kid from Queens, the Spider-Man movies have totaled $8.3 billion dollars at the box office. To put this in perspective, that is only $2 billion less than the entire Star Wars franchise has earned in total, unadjusted for inflation, box office. The most successful of the Spider-Man movies is the most recent, No Way Home, which united all three main actors and all the franchise villains, except for Topher Grace’s Venom from Spider-Man 3.
No Way Home was such a blockbuster success for Marvel and Sony that rumors started flying about new movies for the Maguire and Garfield Spider-Men. While more solo Spider-Man movies for the two actors are unconfirmed, the pair are expected to return for the MCU mega-crossover, Secret Wars. Meanwhile, Tom Holland is rumored to be reprising the role of Peter Parker for another trilogy of solo movies, allegedly within the Sony universe which includes Venom, Morbius, and the upcoming Kraven.
While Spider-Man is shockingly high on the franchise list, a few other entries merit closer inspection, especially toward the bottom. Die Hard, Jack Ryan, and Barbershop make up the last three spots on the list. While those three franchises are bringing up the rear, that is still higher ranking than other franchises which failed to place, including Mad Max, Divergent, and the solo Superman films.
With a string of top-grossing movies since Spider-Man: No Way Home, Disney is getting ready to bring the latest MCU phase to a close. Infinity War and Endgame, the crossovers that capped off the original slate of Marvel movies, are two of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars keep getting closer, with the upcoming Ant-Man movie including Jonathan Majors’s big-screen debut as Kang the Conqueror, which means in just a few years, Marvel could overtake Star Wars for the top spot on the chart.
