Spider-Man: No Way Home swings to Rs 200 cr club in India, crosses $600 mn mark at North-American box office

Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: No Way Home has entered the Rs 200 crore club in India despite competition from strong contenders like 83 and Pushpa: The Rise . The film had released in theatres on 16 December and has made Rs 202.34 crore in India so far. Check out the stats here

#SpiderMan hits ₹ 200 cr… Restrictions + #PushpaHindi [mass circuits] + #83TheFilm [metros] are speed breakers, but #NewYear holidays + open week prove advantageous in Weekend 3… [Week 3] Fri 3 cr, Sat 4.92 cr, Sun 4.75 cr. Total: ₹ 202.34 cr Nett BOC. #India biz. pic.twitter.com/oA6CqCpwuy

— taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) January 3, 2022

Meanwhile in North America, Hollywood closed out 2021 with more fireworks at the box office for _Spider-Man: No Way Home_, which topped all films for the third straight week and already charts among the highest-grossing films ever. But even with all the champagne popping for No Way Home, the film industry heads into 2022 with plenty of reason for both optimism and concern after a year that saw overall ticket revenue double that of 2020, but still well off the pre-pandemic pace. Movie theatres began the year mostly shuttered but ended it with a monster smash. Sony Pictures’ Marvel sequel No Way Home grossed an estimated $52.7 million over the weekend to bring its three-week total to $609.9 million. That ranks 10th all-time in North America. Worldwide, it’s made $1.37 billion, a total that puts it above Black Panther and makes it the 12th highest grossing film globally. No Way Home, Tom Holland’s third standalone film as the webslinger, gave a huge lift to the box-office recovery that started in earnest last spring when US cinemas opened after a year of COVID-19 closures. Marvel films dominated the turbulent year, accounting for the top four movies of 2021: No Way Home, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings , Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Black Widow. The North American box office in 2021 amounted to $4.5 billion, according to data firm ComScore. That’s about 60% down from 2019 — back before the days of masked moviegoers, social distancing and virus variants like the currently surging omicron. Whether the movies will ever reach those pre-pandemic totals again is uncertain, given that exclusive theatrical windows have since shrunk, studios have experimented with hybrid releases and little besides superhero films are packing theatres. Partly due to COVID-19 disruptions, the 2022 release schedule is unusually packed with potential blockbusters, including The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World: Dominion, Thor: Love and Thunder and Avatar 2. Second place over the weekend went to Universal Picture’s animated sequel _Sing 2_ . It took in $19.6 million in its second weekend to bring its two-week total to $89.7 million. That’s a steady result given that family movies and films skewing toward older moviegoers have been the slowest to bounce back during the pandemic. Sing 2 added another $54.9 million internationally. Its trajectory should make it the top animated release of the pandemic. But after No Way Home and Sing 2, there was little that appealed to moviegoers over the holiday weekend. The King’s Man, the third instalment in Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman series, grossed a modest $4.5 million in its second week after a lacklustre debut. But that was still good enough for third place. The Disney release, produced by 20th Century Studios, has made $47.8 million globally. Steven Spielberg’s _West Side Story_  sold $2.1 million in tickets in its fourth weekend. While holding well (the film dropped 26% from the week prior), the once-envisioned holiday upswing for the acclaimed musical hasn’t materialised. West Side Story has grossed a disappointing $29.6 million domestically. After flopping on its debut last week, Warner Bros.′ _The Matrix Resurrections_  dropped a steep 64% in its second weekend with $3.8 million. The film is simultaneously streaming on HBO Max, a 2021 practice that the studio has pledged to end in 2022. The long-in-coming Matrix reboot was even edged by the second week of the Kurt Warner NFL drama American Underdog, which grossed $4.1 million for Lionsgate. One of the only new releases of the week was Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s _Memoria_ , with Tilda Swinton. Its distributor, Neon, has laid out a novel strategy for the art-house release, playing the film in only one theatre at a time, with no plans for a future streaming or physical release. Memoria started its quixotic, cross-country journey with $52,656 since opening on 16 December at New York’s IFC Center. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at US and Canadian theatres, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday. 1. Spider-Man: No Way Home, $52.7 million. 2. Sing 2, $19.6 million. 3. The King’s Man, $4.5 million. 4. American Underdog, $4.1 million. 5. The Matrix Revolutions, $3.8 million. 6. West Side Story, $2.1 million. 7. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, $1.4 million. 8. Licorice Pizza, $1.2 million. 9. A Journal for Jordan, $1.2 million. 10. Encanto, $1.1 million. (With inputs from The Associated Press)