“Spider-Man” has set himself up to be either the Joe DiMaggio or Mark McGwire of Hollywood films.
With a three-day take of $114.8 million at the box office — making it the first film to eclipse $100 million in that time — the question now is whether the mark will prove as enduring as DiMaggio’s 61-year-old hitting streak or resemble the seemingly insurmountable 70 home runs slugged by McGwire, a record broken just three years later by Barry Bonds.
The weekend benchmark, as lofty as it is, makes for an irresistible target for Hollywood studios, for whom bragging rights seem to matter as much as profits.
“It’s new territory for all of us,” said MGM marketing chief Bob Levin. “Unfortunately, it changes the whole idea of how big a movie can open. The side effect will be increasing pressure on all of us who do these jobs to get those big weekends.”
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An instant blockbuster
All told, three out of four moviegoers nationwide went to see the screen adaptation of the Marvel comic character. That made “Spider-Man” an instant blockbuster, shattering all of Hollywood’s previous assumptions about how many people it can pack into theaters in a single weekend, drawing viewers across generations.
“I don’t think anyone can answer how high is up,” said Tom Borys, president of EDI/Nielsen, which tracks box office numbers.
Paul Dergarabedian, president of another box-office tracking firm, Exhibitor Relations Co., calls the “Spider-Man” accomplishment “the Holy Grail of box office.”
“It creates a new paradigm in terms of what a movie can do. It puts a lot of pressure on all these films. Now `Spider-Man’ is the movie everybody is going to be judged against,” Dergarabedian said.
Opening weekends have climbed steadily for a decade, thanks in part to rising ticket prices that jumped nearly 30 percent during the 1990s. In 1993, “Jurassic Park” became the first film to gross more than $50 million in a three-day weekend, a number that before then had had seemed unthinkable.
More product available
But much of the recent growth in opening weekends is owed to studios flooding theaters with as many as 8,000 prints of its films nationwide, a growth in the number of multiplex theaters and the costly blitzkrieg marketing strategy that blankets TV networks, newspapers, radio, buses and billboardswith film ads.
In addition, demographics are working in the industry’s favor. Teens are Hollywood’s most coveted audience, and today they have more disposable income, spending on average $84 a week overall, according to Teenage Research Unlimited. Census projections also show the number of 12- to 17-year-olds — Hollywood’s prime movie audience and coveted repeat customers — are growing at a fast clip, rising an estimated 7 percent in the next five years.
Last November, studio executives got a hint that a $100-million weekend was possible when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” grossed $90.3 million in three days. Given its 2 1/2-hour running time, which limited the number of shows at theaters, that box-office take convinced observers that more was possible. Executives at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which released “Spider-Man,” knew as early as Saturday morning they were heading into new territory.
Results for the previous night showed the film had already grossed $39 million, a record. “Spider-Man” not only sold out most of the seats available in theaters, but with a playing time a half-hour shorter than “Harry Potter,” theater owners squeezed in additional showings, reportedly as many as 30 screenings a day at some theater complexes.
Repeat moviegoers
“We had kids come back two and three times to see the film over the weekend,” said Jerry Pokorski, executive vice president and head film buyer for Pacific Theatres in Los Angeles.
National Association of Theatre Owners President John Fithian also notes that “Spider-Man” played to full theaters through its late showings because it appeals to older moviegoers.
“You had a lot more people at midnight for `Spider-Man’ than you did for `Harry Potter,”‘ Fithian said.
At the end of the weekend “Spider-Man” averaged a record $31,000 per screen for a major Hollywood release. “Spider-Man” out-grossed the No. 2 film, “The Scorpion King,” by $105 million.
“Can we look forward to this again?” asked Universal Pictures distribution chief Nikki Rocco. “Who knows? It’s an anomaly, but it raises the bar. It’s all about the competitive marketplace.”