Spiderman is back, everywhere but the United States, anyway. The movie premiered over the weekend to international audiences in 13 territories, nine in Asia and four in Europe.
The releases in Asia and Europe comes on the tail of Sam Raimi’s $890 million blockbuster hit, Spiderman 3 five years ago. It is unclear why they chose to test the international waters before bring the movie to American audiences, but the rest of the world will bee able to see the film tonight at midnight.
So far, the movie did well in Asia, fairing better that Spiderman 3 in most countries. In India, it was the highest grossing opening weekend of any Hollywood directed film. Here are some of the numbers from EW:
Korea – $15.8 million from 1,213 screens on Thursday-Sunday. Started off 24 percent bigger than Spider-Man 3 and 10 percent higher than The Avengers.
Japan – $11.4 million from 1,092 screens on Saturday-Sunday. That’s 13 percent better than the debut weekend of Spider-Man 3, which kicked off its run with $10.1 million from 807 screens.
India – $6.0 million from 1,236 screens. This is the biggest debut ever for a Hollywood film. Amazing Spider-Man opened 74 percent ahead of Spider-Man 3, and 73 percent ahead of The Avengers.
Philippines – $3.2M from 529 screens. The fourth biggest opening of all time behind The Avengers, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1.
Taiwan – $2.9M from 268 screens. This is the second biggest weekend of the year behind The Avengers. Spider-Man 3 earned $4.9 million during its entire run in Taiwan.
Hong Kong – $2.7M from 158 screens. Once again, this is the 4th biggest opening of all time, behind just Transformers: Dark of the Moon, The Avengers, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.
The Amazing Spider-Man International Trailer from Vibe Creative on Vimeo.
The film also opened in certain markets in Europe, coming to Germany, Holland, Austria and Switzerland, but did not fair as well as the Asian markets, which took in $50 million in three days. There is likely good reason for this, because the release coincided with with the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship. This is likely the reason most didn’t make it to the theaters. Sony withheld the release in most European markets to avoid competing with EURO 2012, so the lackluster numbers in Europe is not necessarily an indicator of European disinterest in the film.
According to EW, tracking reports have predicted the film will do $125 million in the first 6 days. This would be a solid but not incredible start. Spiderman 3 saw 150 million in 3 days. The Amazing Spider Man has been hard to grasp from the start. Many are wondering why we are seeing a new iteration only 5 years after the last one, so this film will hinge its success purely on the merits of the film alone, not the hype.