“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” hit theaters on May 2, 2014, helping to kick off that year’s summer movie season. Unfortunately, it entered the marketplace with a hefty 141-minute running time and mixed reviews. Be that as it may, Spidey was still arguably the most popular superhero on the planet, and superhero movies were having their too-big-to-fail moment at that time. The mixed critical response and muddled story that was trying to do way too much didn’t really matter as far as the box office was concerned.
Webb’s second “Spider-Man” film opened to $91.7 million domestically, far higher than the previous entry in the franchise, which debuted to just $62 million two years earlier. Sony had the benefit of no direct competition that weekend, but unfortunately, word of mouth caught up with it pretty quickly as the film fell 61% in its second weekend for a $35.5 million haul, losing the top spot to Universal’s comedy “Neighbors.” When “Godzilla” arrived the following weekend, most of the blockbuster oxygen in the room was being sucked up by other films, and that would be the case for the rest of the summer.
It was a good news/bad news situation for Sony. The bad news is that “TASM2” topped out at just $202.8 million domestically, far less than Garfield’s first film, which brought in $262 million in North America. The good news is that Spider-Man was still wildly popular overseas, so the film brought in $506.1 million internationally, bringing its global total to $708.9 million. Even against a budget north of $200 million, that represented a win for the studio. At least it would have, if the movie had been allowed to exist on its own terms. But that simply wasn’t the case for superhero movies in 2014. That number, coupled with the mixed response, couldn’t possibly carry the weight of the studio’s larger plans.
Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made over $700 million worldwide, but still ended up killing Sony’s attempt at a solo, non-MCU Spider-Man franchise. Read More