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Spider-Man has found his home sweet home.
Spider-Man: Homecoming opened with an estimated $117 million at the domestic box office this weekend. It’s a confidence boost for a film studio that has struggled to achieve success in bringing the legendary Marvel character to the big screen.
After Sony’s Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man films fizzled out, ending with 2007’s Spider-Man 3, the studio wasted little time in rebooting them. The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield, launched in 2012; it opened to $62 million domestically, going on to gross $262 domestically and nearly $758 million worldwide.
Its sequel, 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, opened to $91.6 million domestically, going on to gross $202.8 million domestically and nearly $709 million worldwide. But even though The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had a bigger opening weekend than its predecessor, Sony considered the film a disappointment because of its lower worldwide total. Sequels are generally expected to make more money than the original.
That disappointment not only caused Sony to cancel its plans for an Amazing Spider-Man 3, but to seek out a new actor to play the web-slinger. The studio also struck a landmark deal with Marvel Studios that would allow Spider-Man to appear in a Marvel film, even though Sony owns the film rights to the character. Spider-Man: Homecoming — a co-production between Sony and Marvel, starring Tom Holland as Spidey — is the result. And Homecoming’s $117 million opening weekend seems to indicate that partnering with Marvel and casting Holland were both excellent decisions on Sony’s part, decisions that might finally get Spider-Man’s cinematic legacy back on track.
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Reviews
44
- Atomic Blonde is thrilling, gorgeous nonsense. More, please!
- Dunkirk turns a WWII battle into a symphony. It's Christopher Nolan's masterpiece.
- Do not see The Emoji Movie
- War for the Planet of the Apes is the summer’s most essential blockbuster
- Brigsby Bear is a sweet, bizarre little film about pop culture obsession
- A Ghost Story was one of Sundance’s most buzzed-about films. It earns the hype.
- The Hitman's Bodyguard has all the makings of a fun summer hit. What makes it so dull?
- Ingrid Goes West, starring Aubrey Plaza as an Instagram addict, is deliciously twisted
- Logan Lucky puts a West Virginia spin on an Ocean’s 11-style heist. It’s terrific fun.
- The Glass Castle turns a best-selling memoir into a moving but flawed film
- Detroit, about one of the biggest riots in US history, is hard to watch. That’s a good thing.
- Wind River is an intense and painful thriller set on a Native American reservation
- The Incredible Jessica James only works because of the incredible Jessica Williams
- Girls Trip is a filthy, hilarious gem
- Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has too much Valerian, too little Thousand Planets
- In Lady Macbeth, privilege and power are a powder keg, and sex and murder are the spark
- The Big Sick is one of the year’s best comedies, but it doesn’t shy away from heavy topics
- Netflix’s To the Bone doesn’t glamorize eating disorders. It’s frank, funny, and unsparing.
- Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming is the best superhero movie of 2017
- In Netflix's fantastic, wacky Okja, it's Tilda Swinton vs. superpig
- Despicable Me 3 is everything good and bad about the franchise in one messy package
- Edgar Wright’s wildly entertaining Baby Driver is a lean, mean, genre-smashing machine
- Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler are perfect partners in crime in the ridiculous, timely The House
- Spider-Man: Homecoming: 5 reasons why this is the best Spider-Man movie yet
- The Bad Batch isn't a great dystopian film, but it's definitely an interesting one
- Sofia Coppola triumphs with The Beguiled, a suspenseful Civil War revenge comedy
- Transformers: The Last Knight evaporates on contact. This could be a point in its favor.
- The Book of Henry is so deliriously bad, it feels cursed
- Cars 3 gets back to what made the franchise adequate
- Like its characters, Rough Night is far from perfect but often hilarious
- The Mummy says more about its stars and its franchise than anything mummy-related
- Hollywood's ideas about audiences are outdated. Wonder Woman's record-smashing debut proves it.
- Captain Underpants is better than any movie named Captain Underpants has a right to be
- Review: Wonder Woman is a gorgeous, joyful triumph of a superhero film
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the second-best Pirates movie. It’s also exhausting.
- Review: Baywatch is a limp, charmless waste of talent
- Netflix’s War Machine, starring Brad Pitt, is a disappointingly flat wartime farce
- Alien: Covenant is too muddled to pull off its deeply ambitious Satan allegories
- Paris Can Wait stars Diane Lane in a sumptuous Instagram feed disguised as a movie
- Snatched caters to Amy Schumer’s comedic talents, but wastes Goldie Hawn in the process
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is surprisingly good, and surprisingly political
- The Lovers asks a loaded question: what if you cheat on your affair with your spouse?
- Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is Marvel’s funniest film, and much braver than the original
- The Dark Tower trailer is finally here
- Interviews 4
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Analysis
25
- The terrific and terrible summer 2017 movie season, explained
- Dunkirk is playing in a lot of formats. Here’s how each affects your viewing experience.
- Al Gore’s new Inconvenient Truth sequel is a strange artifact of a post-truth year
- Dunkirk’s “mole” isn’t a spy. But if you missed that detail, you’re not alone.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming honored one of the best Spider-Man issues ever created
- War for the Planet of the Apes seals the blockbuster trilogy’s status as the decade’s best
- Spider-Man: Homecoming: 5 of the movie’s best Easter eggs
- Iron Man can't carry the MCU forever. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Marvel passed the torch.
- What Tom Holland has that other Spider-Mans haven’t
- The Transformers movies are total nonsense. That’s their secret strength.
- Wonder Woman’s dueling origin stories, and their effect on the hero’s feminism, explained
- Patty Jenkins fought for one scene in Wonder Woman — and conquered Hollywood’s biggest problem
- Wonder Woman: Chris Pine's Steve Trevor is the superhero girlfriend comic book movies need
- Why silly summer movies matter
- Alien: Covenant sneakily explores the horrors of directing blockbusters in 2017
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2's 5 end-credits scenes, explained [spoilers]
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’s Thor: Ragnarok Easter egg, explained
- How can movie theaters compete with your living room? By building a better living room.
- Why Guardians of the Galaxy’s creativity is so important to the superhero movie genre
- 11 potential sleeper hits that could break the summertime blockbuster blues
- Summer box office 2017: the superhero and kids movies that will dominate the season
- Your summer reading list, courtesy of the movies
- The summer movie sequels and reboots to watch, and the ones nobody needed
- 23 summer movies to get excited about
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: 5 things to know about Marvel’s hugely anticipated sequel
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News
7
- Spider-Man: Homecoming’s 2 end-credits scenes, explained
- Avengers: Infinity War’s new trailer turns Star-Lord and Iron Man into Marvel’s newest power couple
- Wonder Woman overtakes Guardians of the Galaxy 2 to become the summer’s biggest movie
- The outrage over Gal Gadot’s $300,000 paycheck for Wonder Woman, explained
- Why Wonder Woman’s second-weekend sales are so extraordinary — and important
- Why people are freaking out over Wonder Woman’s stellar Rotten Tomatoes score
- Wonder Woman’s costume has gotten a lot brighter since Batman v Superman
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