Looks like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be somewhat of a success. Variety is reporting that its domestic opening estimates will make $95 million for the weekend.
The film stars Andrew Garfield as a sarcastic and humorous Peter Parker and Spider-Man and Emma Stone as his love interest Gwen Stacy returns to theaters with a sequel that’s been well received by critics. If the report is correct it looks like the Spider-Man sequel will also please fans as well.
Thursday night The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opened at approximately 3,000 locations before expanding on Friday to 4,324 and 353 are Imax movie theaters. According to the projections from industry insiders, the film is looking to be in the same lane as Captain America: the Winter Soldier which has currently made $228 million domestically over the last month.
Cumulatively Captain America: The Winter Soldier has made $700 million worldwide, and according to insiders the same can happen for the Spider-Man sequel due to a strong lead in from Captain America.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 film introduces a ton of villains in the form of Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn, Jamie Foxx as Electro, and Paul Giamatti as Aleksei.
The official synopsis of the sequel is as follows:
“It’s great to be Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield). For Peter Parker, there’s no feeling quite like swinging between skyscrapers, embracing being the hero, and spending time with Gwen (Emma Stone). But being Spider-Man comes at a price: only Spider-Man can protect his fellow New Yorkers from the formidable villains that threaten the city. With the emergence of Electro (Jamie Foxx), Peter must confront a foe far more powerful than he. And as his old friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), returns, Peter comes to realize that all of his enemies have one thing in common: OsCorp.”
For Marvel this is the third time a Spider-Man film has had an opening weekend in May, so it seems to be working for the franchise, which took the lead from the last film of Sam Raimi’s departed Spiderman series. Currently Variety is projecting an opening of $95 million, which is a lighter box office compared to The Amazing Spider-Man’s opening weekend but the box office climate has continued to change throughout the years, and once considered a soft opening could translate into a sizeable box office.
As for The Amazing Spider-Man reboot which introduced Andrew Garfield as a new truer to form Spider-Man, that film grossed $750 million worldwide and pushed the film into a franchise with the new cast. In six days the reboot earned $137 million.
The advantage that the sequel has is that it can close the gap on all the other superhero films and can remain as the dominate one for some time. The next superhero film to come after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is X-Men: Days of Future past, which opens on Memorial Day weekend. The only other action competition it may have is the widely anticipated reboot Godzilla which is set to be released on May 16.
[Image Credit: Marvel]