At midnight on November 29, tickets for Spider-Man: No Way Home went on sale, and blockbuster-worthy chaos ensued. Domestic movie ticket sites across the web crashed en masse, unable to cope with the high demand for the latest MCU movie. Spider-Man:No Way Home has created a fervor at the box office that was last seen by previous Marvel effort Avengers: Endgame in 2019 - and it hasn't even been released yet.
Since filming began in October 2020, the latest Spider-Man movie has been a cause for colossal amounts of excitement and anticipation. The trailer's launch even had its own fan event at Regal Sherman Oaks in Los Angeles on November 16. Throughout the long lead-up to the release at the end of this year, there have been a steady stream of rumors, leaks, theories, and photos that have surfaced online and that have been constantly trending. With the clock ticking down to the theatrical release on December 17, anticipation is reaching dizzying heights.
The latest Spider-Man ruccus online has come in the form of widespread website crashes as fans surged to snag seats in theaters. As tickets were released (or preparing to be so), ticketing sites like Atom Tickets, Fandango, and MovieTickets.com alongside movie theater sites like AMC, Cinemark, and Regal saw a massive surge in demand and website visits. This led many of them to crash or to place users in hours-long online queues. Fans took to Twitter in a panic, where #SpidermanNoWayHome was trending, with many announcing their early rise in an effort to secure tickets. Soon after tickets went on sale, opportunists began listing them on eBay with ridiculous prices ranging from $200 to $25,000.
Would-be viewers who were not successful in securing seats complained about the lack of preparation from movie theater and ticket sites which should have predicted the huge popularity of the release (even given Sony's latest poster for No Way Home being widely mocked). But the fervor and extreme popularity has had analysts pleased about the wider significance for the pandemic-battered box offices. There has been steady growth since cinemas have reopened, but the intense excitement for No Way Home will surely provide a much-needed boost. A senior media analyst at Comscore, Paul Dergarabedian, has stated that there is hope the new movie could be "the first pandemic-era release to break $100 million opening weekend mark.” Fittingly, Sam Raimi’s original 2002 movie Spider-Man was actually the first film ever to achieve more than $100 million at the box office on opening.
Though they continue to be the highest-grossing movies for theaters, superhero films are not loved by all. Ridley Scott recently did not mince his words on this subject, branding movies in the genre as just “not any f***ing good.” But after an extremely tough year for the industry, big blockbusters like those from Marvel Studios are enticing audiences back to the theaters in droves. And Spider-Man: No Way Home may well break records in this regard.
Fans who haven't managed to bag tickets yet can find comfort in the fact that the movie will likely have a long stay in theaters, especially if demand continues to be this high. The wait to see what will happen next in the Multiverse is almost over.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is set to premiere in theaters on December 17, 2021.
Source: CNBC