Almost five years ago, \u201cSpider-Man: No Way Home\u201d swung into theaters in the teeth of a COVID-19 surge and did what almost nothing else could that winter: drove cooped-up moviegoers to cinemas and opened to one of the biggest domestic debuts on record, pulling in $260 million.<\/p>\n
This weekend, Peter Parker is back \u2014 a little older, more world-weary and facing a far less forgiving market.<\/p>\n
The genre\u2019s floor has dropped out since then.<\/p>\n
Annual box office revenue for superhero movies is down, on average, about $3.5 billion, about half of what it was during the pre-pandemic years of 2017 to 2019, according to data from the FranchiseRe industry newsletter. Sony Pictures is betting that more real-world stunts, a relatable narrative and Spidey\u2019s lasting popularity are enough to put \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day\u201d on the other side of that trend.<\/p>\n
Whatever the approach, the commercial appetite is there. Pre-sales for the film, which stars Tom Holland and Zendaya, have been robust, and industry tracking estimates an opening weekend haul of at least $195 million in the U.S. and Canada. If that holds, it would be the year\u2019s biggest domestic debut, beating Walt Disney Co. and Pixar\u2019s \u201cToy Story 5\u201d<\/a> ($159.7 million). The movie cost about $225 million to produce and is produced by Sony\u2019s Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios and Pascal Pictures.<\/p>\n \u201cThis movie takes a grounded, emotional approach to the story, and I actually believe that\u2019s what audiences are hungry for,\u201d said Tom Rothman, chairman of Sony\u2019s motion picture group. \u201cIt\u2019s got all the whiz-bang wow visuals. But at its heart, it\u2019s more a superperson movie, if you will, rather than a superhero movie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBrand New Day\u201d picks up where the last film left off. A spell has erased Peter Parker from the world\u2019s memory \u2014 the price of undoing the public exposure of his identity \u2014 leaving him a stranger to his best friend, Ned, and to MJ. Without those friendships, he pours himself into his crime-fighting work to stave off his loneliness.<\/p>\n That feeling of being adrift without knowing where to turn is what the filmmakers built the movie around.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all really isolated from each other,\u201d said Amy Pascal, one of the film\u2019s producers who has overseen the entire franchise. \u201cThat kind of longing for connection between people and not knowing how to make it happen and living in a world where we become more and more remote, matched the moment that people are going through.\u201d<\/p>\n The smaller scale was also a reaction to what came before it. \u201cNo Way Home\u201d brought back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in a time-bending multiverse crossover, and there was no topping it.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a movie that was 20 years in the making,\u201d Pascal said. \u201cThere was no way to be bigger than that. So we went smaller. We went internal instead of external, and we found the bigness in that.\u201d<\/p>\n Peter Parker\u2019s isolation is what drew director Destin Daniel Cretton, who made 2021\u2019s \u201cShang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings\u201d and was an executive producer on the Marvel Television series \u201cWonder Man.\u201d He said he related to the pain and tragedy the character goes through, and to the idea of a superhero story that felt like it was happening in a real place.<\/p>\n The production\u2019s rule of thumb became trying to execute scenes practically, in front of a lens, wherever possible.<\/p>\n That included a tank chase shot largely on a street in Glasgow, Scotland, on the first day of filming, complete with a rig that let an actor swing with explosions going off behind him. Thousands of people showed up to watch, which was \u201ca big adrenaline rush on day one,\u201d Cretton said.<\/p>\n A later set piece \u2014 Spider-Man against a group of red-clad ninjas known as the Hand \u2014 was shot at a former prison outside London.<\/p>\n Cretton\u2019s insistence on real locations has an argument behind it. At a moment when audiences want to know what goes into moviemaking and are increasingly unsure whether the myriad images they\u2019re looking at were generated by artificial intelligence, the answer is visible labor.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, more than ever, I think it\u2019s important for audiences to really feel that people made the thing that they\u2019re watching, and people went through an experience to make the thing they\u2019re watching,\u201d said Cretton, who grew up watching behind-the-scenes segments on his favorite DVDs. \u201cAll of that, I think, is just as important as the thing that they\u2019re watching.\u201d<\/p>\n Effects alone don\u2019t carry a superhero movie \u2014 or any movie, for that matter \u2014 anymore, Cretton said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe action can be great, the [visual effects] can be fantastic, the explosions can be huge, but if there isn\u2019t some type of emotional spine that connects with people where they are and what they\u2019re going through, it\u2019s just another big, explosive movie,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The slump itself isn\u2019t in dispute. Many of Marvel\u2019s newer films haven\u2019t come close to the heights its predecessors once cleared, and this year, movies like Amazon MGM Studios\u2019 \u201cMasters of the Universe\u201d and Warner Bros. and DC Studios\u2019 \u201cSupergirl\u201d underperformed in theaters<\/a>. <\/p>\n What\u2019s driving it is contested.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s fatigue of the genre,\u201d Rothman said. \u201cI think it\u2019s the audience wanting new things and less predictability.\u201d<\/p>\n For Marvel, long treated as the genre\u2019s gold standard, part of the problem was volume; a dense web of interconnected films and TV shows that made casual viewers feel like they had too much homework to do before a new premiere.<\/p>\n The likeliest near-term explanation for that estimated $195-million opening, though, may have less to do with tone than with supply and brand. \u201cBrand New Day\u201d is the first Marvel superhero film since last year\u2019s \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps,\u201d and Spider-Man remains one of the most commercially durable characters in the genre.<\/p>\n