Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man earned $7.5 million at midnight shows, which is roughly comparable to the take from early screenings of Iron Man 2, Pirates of the Caribbean 2, and Spider-Man 3, the final film in the original trilogy that Sony and Webb are attempting to revive.  While Spidey’s take pales in comparison with The Avengers’ massive $18.7 million take (see "'Avengers' Assembles $18.7 Million at Midnight"), the results are encouraging for the studio that was worried that audiences might be overly familiar with the Spider-Man origin story, that was also the subject of Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man film.

 

Webb’s film also opened in a number of foreign territories this past weekend and performed especially well earning $50.2 million and, according to Deadline, actually outperforming The Avengers in several of these territories.  The fact that The Amazing Spider-Man opened on Tuesday will make comparisons difficult.  After debuting on Tuesday, the film will have the July 4th holiday on Wednesday as well as Thursday, which many people are taking off, before starting its first weekend in theaters on Friday.  With all those opportunities for fans to see the movie before its weekend opening, it appears doubtful that The Amazing Spider-Man will set any weekend records, but its end of the first weekend total on Sunday night could still be very impressive.

 

Critics appear quite pleased with the new Spider-Man movie, which has a 75% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with most of the dissenters carping about how they have seen "this story before."  Since the original Spider-Man trilogy established the most successful superhero franchise yet, at least until Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises debuts, the success of Webb’s attempt to rejuvenate the franchise is a big story that ICv2 will be following closely through the week.