'Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse' Swings To The Top Of The Box Office With $35 Million Debut
This has been the year of Marvel Comics at the box office, and not just because of the success of Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Beyond the success of Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther and Ant-Man and the Wasp, movies like Deadpool 2 and Venom have raked in a lot of dough as well, and now one more has landed on top of the box office.
Sony's animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse debuted in theaters this past weekend, and while it didn't light the box office on fire, that didn't stop it from setting the record for the largest three-day animated opening weekend of all time for the month of December with $35.4 million. It just barely beat out Illumination Entertainment's Sing, which previously earned $35.2 million back in 2016. But how did the rest of the box office do?
Even though Spider-Verse's opening weekend wasn't massive, the fact that the film earned an A+ CinemaScore from opening day audiences is a good sign that word of mouth will keep the movie alive as we head into the Christmas season and families need movies to see while they get some time off. So it's good that there's already a sequel in the works.
Coming in second place is another attempt by Warner Bros. Pictures to drum up some awards interest in Clint Eastwood with his latest directorial effort, The Mule. The true story, which also stars Clint Eastwood in the lead role, earned $17.2 million in its opening weekend, and it received an A- from CinemaScore audiences. It will likely keep appealing to those older crowds who aren't up for flashy superhero stories.
Family programming rounds out the top five with The Grinch and Ralph Breaks the Internet still having a strong hold on family audiences. The new adaptation of the Dr. Seuss tale racked up another $11.5 million, which is impressive after being in theaters for five weeks, pushing it to nearly $240 million domestically. Meanwhile, the Wreck-It Ralph sequel has now dropped below The Grinch for the first time with just $9.58 million. But it's Christmas, so The Grinch has more appeal during this season.
On the darker side of box office news, Universal's adaptation of Mortal Engines did what everyone expected the big budget sci-fi fantasy film to do: it bombed hard. The film that costs over $100 million to produced opened at #5 with a paltry $7.5 million, and that's from over 3,100 screens. It doesn't help that the reviews were mostly unfavorable and audiences gave it only a B- CinemaScore. If you're planning on seeing this one, you better do it sooner than later, because it's not going to be around for awhile.
Also interesting to note is the re-release of Once Upon a Deadpool, which actually kicked off earlier in the week before the weekend officially began. If Fox was hoping a rush of families would be checking out the PG-13 redux of Deadpool 2, they likely aren't very happy with the fact that it only pulled in $2.6 million. But then again, getting audiences to see a movie that has been out on home video for some time now was never going to be easy. At least some of the money is going to charity, so that's good.