Look out ‘Avengers’ as it looks like your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man may be on the road to trapping your record breaking performance. Reports have ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ sweeping the Asian box office earning an outstanding $50.2 million in gross receipts.
With Europe in the midst of its soccer championships, Sony gave an early release of the film mainly in Asia. Movie goers in India, Korea, Japan, Philippines, and Hong Kong got the jump on everyone else who otherwise have to wait until July 3rd.
Korea led the way with a gross earnings of $13.4 million capturing 71% of the market share giving ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ the 3rd biggest earning record of all time for a Hollywood film in that country. It follows behind ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ and ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ who have the number one and two spots. ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ also earned 10% more than ‘The Avengers’ on their opening weekend there.
In India, the film grossed $6 million, the biggest opening ever for a Hollywood film in that country. It earned 73% more than ‘The Avengers’, 74% more than Sam Raimi’s ‘Spider-Man 3’ and more than double the lifetime box office gross of ‘The Dark Knight.’
In Japan, the movie opened with $11.4 million and is estimated to have accounted for 84% of the country’s total box office receipts for Saturday and Sunday.
In Hong Kong, ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ earned $2.7 million on 158 screens pulling in 84% of the total box office gross making the film the 4th largest Friday-Sunday opening of all time in the city.
With these impressive numbers, does that mean that the movie will also fair as well everywhere else? Hard to say. International success is really not an indication that the film will be successful domestically. Take a look at ‘Battleship’, for example. The Peter Berg film earned a number one spot in Australia, Korea, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and 11 other territories beating out ‘The Hunger Games’ in some of the box offices. But once it hit the shores of the US, it sunk big time. However, ‘The Avengers’ also started with some outstanding box office numbers and look where it is today.
The real test of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’s’ box office appeal will happen in the next couple days when the film will resume the rest of its world-wide release on July 3rd. Either way, the summer movies of 2012 so far is looking to be the best season for comic book/superhero fans!
Source: Deadline
