“Spider-Man: Homecoming” was not only the return home for the legendary wall-crawler but it was also the 16th film since Marvel Studios formed their own production company and began to make their own films. Before that, movies like “Hulk” was released by Universal, “Fantastic Four” and “X-Men” by Fox, and “Spider-Man” by Sony. With “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” Sony agreed to work with Marvel and let Marvel produce the movie and it paid off big time.
Box Office Bonanza
“Spider-Man: Homecoming” made an impressive $257 million in its opening weekend and that was a huge deal for Sony.
However, it was par for course with Marvel. That total was able to push the total box office take for Marvel to over $12 billion worldwide. For those doubters who believe the floor is about to crash out on the comic book movies that so many people love, $12 billion is the reason to believe that things are only going to continue rolling along.
In the United States alone, the Marvel Cinematic Universe ranks fourth all-time behind “Star Wars,” “Avatar,” and “Jurassic Park.” Worldwide, the Marvel Cinematic Universe sits easily in first place, $4 billion higher than second place “Harry Potter” and $5 billion higher than “Star Wars.” It should be noted that all three franchises are still rolling along but Marvel has multiple movies a year while “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter” are only putting out one a year.
The future for Marvel
“Spider-Man: Homecoming” continued to roll strong in its second week, falling to second behind “War for the Planet of the Apes” but still making $45.2 million domestically and pushing its worldwide totals up to $469 million. It now sits in 11th place domestically for Marvel, which speaks wonders about the movies that came before it.
“The Avengers” sits as the fifth highest grossing movie worldwide at $1.5 billion. “Avengers: Age of Ultron” ($1.4 billion), “Iron Man 3” ($1.2 billion), and Captain America: Civil War ($1.1 billion) all passed the billion-dollar mark as well.
This year sees the third Thor movie titled “Thor: Ragnarok.” After that “Black Panther” gets his own movie and then Marvel is seeing if the next Avengers movie, “Avengers: Infinity War” can keep the pace with the first two by passing the $1 billion mark worldwide.
After that is the sequel “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and the first Marvel female-led movie “Captain Marvel” before things are turned on their heads in the fourth Avengers movie in 2019.
Marvel has announced that they will phase out beloved heroes like Iron Man, Captain American, and Thor at that point and it will be interesting to see if fans stick around after that. Luckily, the first movie following that is the sequel to “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” so don’t expect Marvel to lose too many fans at that point.
