$360 million in three days in North America. That is the largest opening weekend any film has ever had, passing Avengers: Endgame's $357.1 million. Worldwide it took $932 million, second only to Endgame's $1.22 billion.
At the premiere last week, Tom Holland was asked how long he would keep playing Spider-Man. He said "for as long as they'll have me" — and then added the condition: "If this movie does good, I guess we'll see!"
The movie did the best opening business in the history of the medium.
Here is Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group chairman Tom Rothman, this week, asked whether a fifth film with Holland is being discussed:
"No, not in any concrete sense — only aspirational."
And on Holland's future in the role:
"The honest truth is we don't know at this point. This has been the focus of our studio for almost two years."
Why that is stranger than it sounds
Studios do not usually hesitate after a record.
The standard sequence is: enormous opening, immediate sequel announcement, cast locked before the second weekend. It is the safest decision in the business. Rothman instead described talks that have not happened in any concrete sense, about an actor whose availability is not in question — Holland has publicly volunteered.
Some of that is negotiating posture. A studio that has just proven the property is the biggest in the world does not improve its position by announcing it needs the star. Some of it is honest: Rothman said the studio has been consumed by this one film for two years, which is what shipping a picture of this size actually costs.
But the gap is real, and it is the interesting part of a story that would otherwise just be a number. Asked whether there is still a world in which another Holland sequel happens, Rothman gave a one-word answer: "Yes." Asked about Holland saying he wanted to stay, he said: "I can tell you when I heard that Tom said that, I jumped for joy."
Enthusiasm without a deal is still not a deal.
The number moved after the weekend
Worth explaining, because two different figures are in circulation and both were correct when published.
Sunday's studio estimates put the domestic opening at $355 million — which would have been the second-biggest ever. That is what Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and others reported on Sunday.
Monday's actuals came in at $360 million, which passed Endgame and made it the record. Estimates are projections of Sunday business; actuals are what the tills say. A five-million-dollar revision is small in percentage terms and, in this case, decisive.
What it settles about the multiverse bet
This is the part with consequences beyond one film.
No Way Home made $1.9 billion on multiverse spectacle and nostalgia casting — three Spider-Men, a run of villain cameos, the most effective use of audience memory the genre has managed. Brand New Day deliberately declined to run that play, and was built as a grounded, single-universe story.
It just out-opened everything ever made.
That does not prove audiences are tired of the multiverse. One data point rarely proves anything, and a Spider-Man film with Holland and Zendaya has advantages no control group can match. But it removes the excuse that the spectacle format is load-bearing — a studio can now point at $360 million and argue that the character was the draw, not the crossover.
Rothman's summary of the weekend, to Variety, was blunter: "Movies aren't dead after all."
What to watch
The second weekend, which is where nostalgia-proof films separate from event films. Whether an announcement follows, and how quickly. And whether "only aspirational" is still the official position a month from now.
Related: Tom Holland's conditional promise at the premiere — and BMW putting an ad for this film on customers' dashboards.
