The superhero blockbuster “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is the most commercially successful movie of the year 2021. That is after a year in which the cinemas were sometimes closed, sometimes open, sometimes harder, sometimes weaker, and still very much , are very far from normal operation, more than astonishing. Because the film generates sums that make you almost think there is no pandemic.
It hit theaters in mid-December and grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide in less than two weeks. No film has succeeded in doing this since the beginning of the pandemic, and it is a difficult hurdle to crack even without a virus. Not even the Bond film “No Time to Die” could break that mark. It currently stands at a little over $ 774 million and is number four in the world’s cinema annual charts.
“Spider-Man” also passed “The Battle at Lake Changjin”, a Chinese war film that has so far been particularly successful in Asia and has grossed over $ 900 million more than Bond. In this respect, Hollywood as a whole should be happy that in the last few days of the year it was just about overtaking the growing Chinese film industry.
No other Marvel movie grossed as much money this year, including James Bond
At least a little jealous of the success of “Spider-Man” could probably be at the Walt Disney Company. The company owns the comic book machine Marvel, which in turn also includes the superhero Spider-Man. But even before Disney swallowed Marvel, the comic book publisher sublicensed the spider man for the cinema to Disney competitor Sony. He’s had the “Spider-Man” films produced by Marvel for a number of years, but he brings them to the cinema himself and should reap the majority of the profits as a distributor.
This must be annoying for Disney, because otherwise the company will have enough of its own Marvel films to break the billion dollar barrier. But not in 2021. From Disney’s own Marvel launches “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, “Eternals” and “Black Widow” could be loud Box Office Mojo nobody can bring in even half the money that “Spider-Man” has now brought in.
Even if a few isolated spectators meanwhile suffer from superhero diarrhea, the message of the majority of all cinema fans to Hollywood seems to be: Don’t annoy us with any nonsense, spare us the old Bond – we want Spider-Man, even more Spider-Man, and preferably just Spider-Man.