Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home is activating mega presales in international box office markets. Due to begin offshore rollout on December 15, just ahead of domestic’s December 17 debut, the Jon Watts-directed installment has set all-time records in multiple markets for the first 24 hours, and has caused some ticketing websites to crash. We’ve heard tell of fans heading to local cinemas to stand in line for advance buys when they couldn’t get them online.
Awaited with a fever pitch, the Tom Holland-starrer, for example, took $7M in Mexico during the first 24 hours tickets were available last week. That’s a new milestone, coming in 40% above Avengers: Endgame. Other markets to score the best-ever presales in the first full day include the UK, Spain, Brazil and Central America.
Per our information, the UK, at 12 days out from release, was seeing advance sales at three times those of No Time To Die at the same point.
Brazil’s advances are 5% over Endgame at the same point; Poland is showing the best presales since Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker; Portugal passed No Time To Die’s total presales in three days; and Australia and Turkey are on par with Endgame.
As Anthony has reported, domestically, No Way Home broke first-day presales records for the pandemic for both the No. 1 and No. 3 circuits, AMC and Cinemark, and also repped their second-best day of presales ever after Endgame.
Not all offshore markets have begun presales, but the current data is a great harbinger of things to come — of course the Omicron variant could still be a factor in how things play out, but Spidey is clearly weaving a web of anticipation. When the first trailer dropped in August, it racked up an all-time record of 355.5M views worldwide in its first 24 hours.
No Way Home hits the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Mexico and Korea on December 15 before opening domestically on December 17. In total, it will be out in more than 90% of the overseas footprint through the first weekend (this excludes China).
There are a lot of eyes on this Spidey, which brings the MCU into the Multiverse, and it’s expected to be a big winner, particularly in the virus era. The last film, Spider-Man: Far From Home, finaled at $1.132B global and was Sony’s highest-grossing pic ever. Nearly $200M of that came from China.
It’s currently unknown if/when the PRC intends to set a date for No Way Home. Right now, the market has only one major Hollywood film — Warner Bros/Village Roadshow’s The Matrix Resurrections — dated in the coming weeks. As that film was given a January 14, 2022 release — and as we are hearing China is not dating any Hollywood movies from December 17 through the end of the year — No Way Home is potentially looking at a 2022 PRC date. Marvel has gotten short shrift in China in the past several months, but speculating on PRC plans can also be a fool’s game; let’s wait and see.
No Way Home’s plot revolves around Spider-Man’s identity being revealed for the first time. When Peter Parker enlists Doctor Strange help to restore his secret, the spell tears a hole in their world, releasing the most powerful villains who’ve ever fought a Spider-Man in any universe. Those revealed in the trailer and then a recent poster drop include Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Electro and Sandman.