The Amazing Spider-Man: $341 Million Worldwide So Far

The Amazing Spider-Man continues to defy those skeptics who thought it was too soon to reboot a franchise that was only ten years old. While its worldwide box office is only toppling minor records (best ever haul for a Tuesday in the States – well, how many blockbusters have opened on a Tuesday?), it’s doing great business in all territories, with an accumulated total now of just over $341 million worldwide.

In North America it took $65 million over the weekend to add to the $75 million it had already earned in the week beforehand, taking its US total to $140 million. In the UK, the film has so far opened to $18.1 million.

Oddly, some industry pundits (including Deadline) seem unimpressed with this haul. And yeah, The Amazing Spider-Man pales next to Avengers Assemble and will probably be trounced by The Dark Knight Rises. Yeah, it will be an struggle to match the worldwide totals of Raimi’s trilogy ($822 million, $784 million and $892 million respectively) even with the benefit of IMAX and 3D ticket prices*.  But this is hardly a flop, and compared to Marvel’s pre-Avengers movies (Thor – $448 million, Captain America – $369 million, Iron Man – $582 million, Iron Man 2 – $623 million) it compares very favourably indeed.

(* Although apparently, fewer people are opting to see The Amazing Spider-Man in 3D than has been usual with other recent blockbusters… are audiences beginning to learn?)

You could argue that if fewer people do see this than went to see any of the Raimi films, then Sony has made a bad move by rebooting rather than giving us Spider-Man 4. But we won’t really know until the final totals are added up in a couple of months time.

What do you think? Would a Raimi-directed Spider-Man 4 have been preferable to The Amazing Spider-Man? Would it have done better at the box office?