If advance ticket sale inquiries are any indication, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” could be the movie blockbuster of 2021.
According to a CNBC report, tickets for the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe went on sale at midnight on Nov. 29 – and within minutes, movie theater sites for the AMC, Cinemark and Regal Ticketing cinema chains and ticket buy sites including Atom Tickets, Fandango and MovieTickets.com saw a massive spike in demand for “Spider-Man: No Way Home” tickets that the sites either crashed or left moviegoers waiting in hour-long online queues.
The previous films starring Tom Holland as Spider-Man opened at $117 million in 2017 and $92 million in 2019, according to data from Comscore. CNBC reported that box office analysts are predicting the film could generate $100 million in ticket sales when it opens on Dec. 16.
“It would be entirely fitting that a Spider-Man movie could potentially be the first pandemic-era release to break the $100 million opening weekend mark,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, adding that Sam Raimi’s 2002 “Spider-Man” was the first film in the history of cinema to open to more than $100 million at the box office.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a co-production between Disney and Sony, and the latter partnered with the AMC movie chain to offer 86,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to members of its AMC Stubs Premiere, AMC Stubs A-List and AMC Investor Connect programs who ordered tickets for the Dec. 16 opening in advance.
“It should come as no surprise that pre-release online ticket sales for ‘No Way Home’ are, in essence, breaking the internet as excited fans clamor to be the first in the virtual line to grab their tickets for the film,” Dergarabedian added.