Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse dramatically outperforms Into the Spider-Verse in its opening weekend

Turns out that a lot of people wanted to return to the Spider-Verse; Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had an opening weekend that massively outperformed its 2018 predecessor, scoring the second-best opening weekend of 2023, and the third-best opening weekend for any Spider-Man movie ever. Not bad for a kid from Brooklyn.

Across the Spider-Verse made $120.5 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. box office — coming in just short of Super Mario Bros’ $146.3 million — setting new records for Sony Animation, and outperforming Marvel Studios’ much-anticipated Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which opened to $118.4 million. It also dramatically outperformed 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which opened to $33.5 million… which, for those curious, means that it made 241% more than the first movie in the series.

That $120.5 million means that it’s also in the top 3 highest opening weekends for Spider-Man movies as a whole, behind 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and 2007’s Spider-Man 3, which earned $260.1 million and $151.1 million respectively.

The animated movie didn’t just do well in the North American markets; it also dramatically outperformed expectations internationally, taking in $88.1 million in 59 markets across the world. (It’s not open in every country just yet; Japan and Korea get the movie later in the month.) European grosses for the movie alone totalled $30.5 million, with $11.5 million of that coming from the UK alone — apparently, Spider-Punk was a really good idea, you guys — with China bringing in $17.3 million. In total, the movie made close to 3 times more internationally in its opening weekend than Into the Spider-Verse.

Given the movie’s incredibly strong word-of-mouth — with many on social media already announcing plans to see the movie again in theaters — this bodes very well for 2023 having a Spider-Summer. The Flash, which opens June 16, certainly has its work cut out in making a big splash by comparison.

We're certainly excited about Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. So much so that we've written about Miles swinging into Fortnite, covered the Spider-Verse Burger King takeover, looked into the new Spider-Jordans, and even eaten a Spider-Whopper.

If you want to get up to date on all Spider-movies before watching this one, check out our Spider-Man movies watch order. Or maybe you want to go a little more complex with our comprehensive Spider-Verse watch order (it has EVERYTHING). If that isn't enough Spider-writing for you, check out Five Spider-hero comics to read that aren’t about Peter Parker's Spider-Man.