Tom Holland is in Spider-Man.
Sony.
Spider-Man: No Way Home will reach the $1 billion mark on Christmas Day with around $400 million domestically and $922 million worldwide. The film is the biggest global grosser of the year and the first billion-dollar earner since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019. While the likes of Detective Chinatown 3, Hi Mom, and The Battle at Lake Changjin offer up a picture of a China that no longer needs a lot of Hollywood tentpoles to thrive, Sony and Marvel's $200 million superhero sequel is already the rare blockbuster. It is the 49th film to pass $1 billion worldwide in unadjusted global grosses, but it is the fifth without China.
It is next to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Dark Knight, Alice in Wonderland, and the Joker. Most of the entries on the list did not need China to pass the milestone. The emergence of China as a major moviegoing marketplace coincides with the rise in post-Avatar 3-D upcharges and the rise in $1 billion-grossing flicks. It goes back to the general purpose of China for Hollywood to make money in China. Without the $301 million Chinese haul, Transformers: Age of Extinction would have earned a huge $804 million worldwide.
If Spider-Man: No Way Home opens in China, it will help the Tom Holland/Zendaya MCU actioner get closer to the global total of Frozen, The Lion King, and The Hunger Games. No Time to Die earned $613 million overseas and $774 million worldwide, with just $60 million from China. The Fast Saga earned $203 million out of $721 million in China, and the MonsterVerse earned $21 million out of $721 million in China. Spider-Man earned $199 million out of $1.131 billion in China, while Kong earned $188 million out of $469 million. I would argue Disney/20th Century Studios is relying on Chinese interest to mitigate the drop-off elsewhere.
With Covid-impacted domestic earnings and China's growing disinterest in Hollywood flicks, there was cause to wonder if Rise of Skywalker would be Hollywood's last $1 billion grosser at least untilAvatar 2. The Spider-Man: No Way Home has reached the milestone in just over two weeks without China. It shows a key variable in a complicated relationship. China doesn't make tentpoles into blockbusters. Hollywood tentpoles are made into global monsters by China. No Way Home will be the biggest grosser since Frozen II. It will be the biggest Spider-Man movie of all time, passing the $400 million unadjusted domestic gross of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and Sony's biggest grosser ever. It will be the biggest solo superhero movie of all time once it passes Black Panther.
