The movie industry has had its biggest weekend in 15 weeks with Spider-Man: Homecoming leading the charge across a school-holiday weekend. The last time weekend box office crept above $20m was for the opening weekend of Beauty And The Beast, which opened with $13.14m, dominating the weekend gross of $22.65m.
Total weekend gross for the top 20 movies was $21.85m, up close to 55% on last week.
The top five are loaded with four multi-franchise offerings, with Wonder Woman the only new brand in what is sure to eventually be a multimovie franchise.
#1 Spider-Man: Homecoming $10.13m
Modern cinema has seen a long line of Spider-Man movie projects based on the Marvel comic superhero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
Earlier this century there was a series of three Spider-Man movies starring Tobey Maguire in the lead role. Andrew Garfield then stepped into the title role in 2012 and 2014 in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The latest incarnation sees Tom Holland in the lead role and the series has started with a blast, pulling $10.13m on debut.
The 2012 release opened just under $5.5m while in 2014 the opening weekend was again just short of $5.5m.
The new release has had a brilliant opening close to double what the last franchise earned. Sony opened the new release on 634 screens, which is two more screens than the treatment given to Pirates Of The Caribbean. The last movies to open on more screens were Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2 and The Fate Of The Furious.
The screen average for Homecoming was $15,978, the best for any movie in wide release since Beauty And The Beast did $18,619 on its opening weekend in March. Homecoming’s opening with $10.13m ranks it the #2 opening of the year, trailing only Beauty And The Beast, and outperforming The Fate Of The Furious by just $57,458.
#2 Despicable Me 3 $4.18m
At the close of Sunday, the movie had done close to $24m after four weekends. After opening with just under $6m, Despicable Me 3 had two weeks close to $3.5m and has now managed to grow fourth weekend revenues by 22% to over $4m. The number of screens grew by 18 on the weekend to 478, delivering a screen average of $8,764, again the best since it opened with a screen average over $12,000.
#3 Cars 3 $1.98m
This Walt Disney release managed to grow its revenue weekend-on-weekend too with a 10% lift. The movie remained on 420 screens with a screen average of $4,721 with a gross so far very close to $9m.
#4 Wonder Woman $1.26m
Although takings dipped by 31%, the movie manages to command a place in the top five after six weeks of release. It remains on 280 screens with a total haul to-date of $28.75m. The most recent movie to do that sort of business after six weeks was Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2, which was sitting on $31.78m.
#5 Transformers: The Last Knight $1.04m
Takings dropped here 52% on the third weekend for the Paramount release. The film passed $10m this week as it remained on 288 screens with a screen average of $3,631.