Spider-Man: No Way Home has just swung into theaters, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe latest film already scored an impressive $50 million in the domestic box office with Thursday previews, the third-highest total for Thursday previews in history. Considering theaters are still feeling the effects of the pandemic, that’s a huge signal that No Way Home is on its way to possibly become 2021’s most successful theatrical release.
With $50 million, No Way Home’s Thursday preview stands behind only Avengers: Endgame, which hauled $60 million in the same period, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens with $57 million. Endgame finished its first weekend with $357.1 million, while The Force Awakens earned $248 million. Predictions for No Way Home are more modest, giving it a result between $150 million and $180 million for its first weekend. However, Tom Holland’s latest adventure as the titular hero is already a massive hit for Sony and the MCU. This early projection already makes No Way Home the most successful MCU film of the year, since Black Widow took $80.3 million on its first weekend, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings $75.3 million, and Eternals $69.5 million.
For further comparison, Spider-Man: Homecoming had the highest box office of the trilogy in terms of previews, with only $15.4 million. Also, to make No Way Home’s release even more impressive, partial numbers from the international market confirm the movie already hauled $44 million overseas. If No Way Home keeps its momentum, it shouldn’t take long to surpass the total box office of other MCU movies released during the pandemic. Black Widow finished its run with $379 million, Shang-Chi with $431 million, and Eternals so far has only $395. More importantly, No Way Home is shaping up to be the most successful chapter of the Spider-Man MCU trilogy, giving it a real shot to beat Homecoming’s $880 million box office and Spider-Man: Far From Home monstrous haul of $1.1 billion.
In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange is enlisted to erase Spider-Man’s real identity from everyone’s memory. Unfortunately, the spell doesn’t work and instead brings visitors from other realities into the MCU. Spider-Man: No Way Home will feature Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, Jamie Foxx’s Electro, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, and, as recently revealed, Thomas Haden Church's Sandman and Rhys Ifans' Lizard. All these villains come from previous iterations of the Web Crawler, exactly one bad guy for each pre-MCU film — three starring Tobey Maguire as the titular hero, and the other two led by Andrew Garfield.
No Way Home also sees the return of Zendaya as MJ, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds, Marisa Tomei as May Parker, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Benedict Wong as Wong, Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson, and Angourie Rice as Betty Brant. Jon Watts returns to direct this third installment, based on a script written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, who both penned the previous two films.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now in theaters.