As “Spider-Man: Far from Home” opened on Tuesday, July 2, the paint was barely dry on the last Marvel Cinematic Universe extravaganza, “Avengers: Endgame.” That crossover film closed the book on a storyline that spanned, so would there still be enough audience appetite for another cataclysmic adventure so soon? The answer, apparently, was yes.
Despite the recent box office slump for sequels this summer, “Far from Home” was far from disappointing. From its release on Tuesday through the Independence Day holiday weekend, the film took in $185 million domestically, which makes it the biggest six-day opening in history. Throw in its international box office haul ($395 million to date), and you get $580 million globally. That’s well over half of the $880 million worldwide box office for 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming” in its entire run. Could this sequel be Marvel’s next billion-dollar blockbuster?
Out of the previous 22 films from the MCU, eight of them grossed more than a billion dollars when all was said and done: “Avengers: Endgame” ($2.772 billion), “Avengers: Infinity War” ($2.048 billion), “The Avengers” ($1.518 billion), “Avengers: Age of Ultron” ($1.405 billion), “Black Panther” ($1.346 billion), “Iron Man 3” ($1.214 billion), “Captain America: Civil War” ($1.153 billion) and “Captain Marvel” ($1.128 billion). Of those, only four were individual hero adventures. Actually, to be honest, only three of them were individual adventures since “Captain America: Civil War” brought together so many heroes it was really an “Avengers” movie in all but title.
On CinemaScore, “Far from Home” got an A from opening night audiences, which is good news for its future as it indicates the film will have positive word of mouth. That said, “Endgame” had a great CinemaScore too but still dropped relatively quickly from week to week thanks to the overcrowded summer movie season and how front-loaded the box office usually is for Marvel movies in general, even under the best of circumstances. So we’ll see in the coming weeks how far “Far from Home” will go.
