Spidey Versus the World

Wed., May. 2, 2007 4:43 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

Just in time to save box offices from the clutches of evil, low-grossing flops...here comes Spider-Man!

Spider-Man 3, the third installment in the billion-dollar-plus franchise, took in a whopping $29.2 million in 16 foreign markets Tuesday, breaking records for opening-day hauls in France, Italy, South Korea and Hong Kong.

Spider-Man 3 had a $6.8 million showing in France, for one, topping the first-day grosses for Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 combined. Italian audiences also said a resounding buon giorno to Spidey, forking over a record $4 million Tuesday to see Tobey Maguire swing into action one more time.

"This is a nice surprise, which bodes well for what promises to be Italy's biggest summer ever," Sony Pictures Italia exec Paulo Simoes told Variety.

Germany welcomed the latest chapter of the superhero saga with $4.6 million, while people in Japan ($3.7 million), South Korea ($3.4 million), the Philippines ($1.1 million) and Hong Kong and Thailand ($1 million each) didn't need much persuading to open their pocketbooks, either.

This promising one-day haul has Sony execs slavering over what could be the biggest domestic opening weekend for a film ever, a high-water mark set a year ago when Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest made off with $135.6 million.

Some are even surmising that Spider-Man 3 could also best the second Pirates film's record one-day take of $55.8 million.

"I think that the chances are actually very good," box-office analyst Chad Hartigan of Exhibitor Relations told E! Online. "First of all, it's opening at a time when the box office is an absolute wasteland and the room for it to...just dominate is enormous." And Sony just said that "it'll be released on 4,200 screens, the widest release we've ever seen—a testament [both to the film and] the weak marketplace."

But while topping Disturbia (three weeks at number one, last weekend with a paltry $9 mil) will be a cakewalk, besting the other Spidey flicks seems to be the number one objective for now.

"Everywhere we've opened so far has been the biggest Spider-Man ever. That's our goal," Sony Pictures vice chairman Jeff Blake told Reuters.

The star-studded sequel is certainly packed to the gills with audience bait. Spider-Man faces off against not one but four villains—Thomas Haden Church's Sandman, Topher Grace's Venom, James Franco's revenge-minded New Goblin and Spidey's own black-suited doppelgänger—and seeks to take his star-crossed romance with Kirsten Dunst's M.J. to the next gold-ringed level, while simultaneously saving the world from intergalactic toxic sludge.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man 3 is a 99.9 percent favorite to anchor the top spot at the U.S. box office at least until Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End sails into theaters May 25. Fandango.com reported that advance ticket sales for the film are six times what the pre-opening day haul was for Spider-Man 2 in 2004—and two and a half times that of last year's Dead Man's Chest. (Fandango and E! Networks are both owned by Comcast.)

Come Friday, the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man 3 and its $258 million production budget will open in 4,253 theaters (breaking the record of 4,223 set by Shrek 2) in North America, up from 4,166 theaters for Spider-Man 2, which grossed $373.6 million domestically and $783 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo.