July 9, 2012 by Vinnie Leduc
After its release early last Tuesday to take advantage of the hump-day holiday on July 4th, The Amazing Spider-Man set a Tuesday record on its way to easily swinging to the top of the domestic box office last weekend. The Marvel superhero reboot’s $35 million opening day debut beat the previous Tuesday record held by Michael Bay’s Transformers, which was released exactly half a decade before The Amazing Spider-Man. Eventually taking in about $140 million in the last week, Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield’s version was good enough for Sony to announce that The Amazing Spider-Man would be the first of at least three movies, matching Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s trilogy.
Speaking of which, The Amazing Spider-Man, one of our most anticipated films of the year, had the lowest attendance numbers and opening day gross of the four recent Spider-Man movies. Similarly, its total gross trails all three Raimi/Maguire movies’ totals at the same point. Maybe a reboot just a decade after the previous trilogy’s first Spider-Man was a bit too soon?
Ted, last week’s bros-vs-man-hos reigning champ, slipped to second and is already at $120 million, continuing to track ahead of The Hangover. Steady at third place was Brave, which is closing in on $200 million (a mark Madagascar 3 just crossed to become the highest grossing movie of its franchise) and helped Disney become the first studio to hit $1 billion this year.
Savages opened last Friday and settled for fourth place overall during the weekend. It was the third-highest debut for an Oliver Stone movie and highest ever for an R-rated Stone movie. With not much violent competition in the next month, it may be able to break Taylor Kitsch’s domestic flop streak after John Carter and Battleship both bombed stateside earlier this year. The last newcomer, the 3D biopic Katy Perry: Part of Me bombed and opened in eighth place.
Here were the top five via BOM:
- The Amazing Spider-Man — Weekend Gross: $65 million — Total Gross: $140 million (new)
- Ted — Weekend Gross: $32.3 million — Total Gross: $120.2 million (#1 last week)
- Brave — Weekend Gross: $20.2 million — Total Gross: $174.5 million (#3 last week)
- Savages — Weekend Gross: $16.2 million — Total Gross: $16.2 million (new)
- Magic Mike — Weekend Gross: $15.6 million — Total Gross: $72.8 million (#2 last week)
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