UPDATED with Sony’s official numbers: Early industry estimates Tuesday morning spotted that Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home finally outstripped the $760.5 million take of James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi spectacle Avatar, becoming the third-highest-grossing movie of all time at the domestic box office with a running total of $760.988M. Sony has made that figure official.
This feat comes after a solid $1.615M Valentine’s Day haul at 3,300 theaters for the Jon Watts-directed pic starring Tom Holland, Zendaya and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Spider-Man: No Way Home accomplishes the feat in 60 days, in the ninth week of release off a pure theatrical window. It took Avatar roughly nine months of release (getting it to $749.7M, per Box Office Mojo), plus an additional 2010 re-release ($10.7M) to get the movie at $760.5M.
Spider-Man: No Way Home has held the No. 1 spot at the domestic box office for six out of its nine weekends of release. That’s the second-most No. 1 weekends for a movie released in the millennium after Avatar, which had seven No. 1 weekends. Spider-Man is part of a group of films that include the original Return of the Jedi, The Fugitive, Rain Man, Rocky IV and Terms of Endearment — all of which ranked No. 1 for six weekends during their theatrical runs.
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Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time at the global box office with $2.84 billion, ahead of Disney/Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame ($2.79 billion) in second. Spider-Man: No Way Home is the sixth-highest-grossing title worldwide, with a running total of $1.8 billion. A release in China is still TBD.
Avatar 2 finally arrives in movie theaters December 16 after six-plus years of production.
The top two movies at the all-time domestic box office are 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936.6M) and Avengers: Endgame ($858.3M), and it’s unlikely that Spidey will ever catch up to those films. Industry estimates peg that the final cume for Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is one of the few MCU titles to boast an A+ CinemaScore, will be around $785M. It took Force Awakens 20 days and Avengers: Endgame 23 days to click past the $760M threshold.
Spider-Man: No Way Home ranked fourth on Monday after Universal’s Marry Me ($3.04M), 20th Century Studios/Disney’s Death on the Nile ($2.6M) and Paramount’s Jackass Forever (est. $1.7M).
Sony is hoping for more box office momentum from Holland this coming Presidents Day weekend with Uncharted, its first release post Spider-Man: No Way Home. Industry estimates have the movie pegged at a $30M-$35M four-day opening. Uncharted has already made $22M from 15 markets.
The next Sony/Marvel movie is Morbius starring Jared Leto on April 1.