It certainly seems like December’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is poised to be one of the biggest films of the year, if not the biggest.
Advanced tickets for the Columbia Pictures/Marvel Studios sequel went on sale Monday and in just two hours, the film broke the record for Fandango’s best first day of presales in 2021, besting the July Disney/Marvel Studios release “Black Widow.”
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” also scored the biggest first-day advance ticket sales on Fandango since 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” which would score the box office record for the biggest opening weekend of all time with a whopping $357 million.
That number seems out of reach for “No Way Home” as Hollywood is still in box office recovery mode from the pandemic and a new COVID variant has emerged, but all signs point to the Tom Holland-fronted sequel securing a robust box office heading into the holidays. Domestically, the current record holder for highest grossing film of the year is Disney/Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” with $224 million.
Directed by Jon Watts, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a follow-up to 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and finds Holland’s Peter Parker dealing with the fallout of being outed to the world as Spider-Man. He seeks Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) help in making the world forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but when a spell goes wrong, villains from alternate universes begin pouring into Parker’s world.
That brings Holland in contact with characters from past “Spider-Man” movies like Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock from 2004’s Sam Raimi sequel “Spider-Man 2” and Jamie Foxx’s Electro from 2014’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” which starred Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, respectively.
Rumors have swirled that these past Spider-Men also make appearances in the multiverse-spanning “No Way Home,” but fans won’t know for sure until the film hits theaters on Dec. 17. The cast also includes Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau and Marisa Tomei.
