Despite Rave Reviews "Spider-Verse" is Failing at the Box Office

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Submitted by S.J. Mitchell on Tue, 12/18/2018 - 11:16

According to The Numbers, a website that tracks financials and rankings for movies, with a production budget of $90 million Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may turn out to be a financial bust.

Full disclaimer: I haven't seen the animated Spider-flick at the time of this article. I'm sure it's very good. As a matter of fact, I want to see it and plan on going while it's still in theaters. That being said, it may not last much longer as this weekend marks the official opening of both Aquaman AND Bumblebee.

Spider-Man may not have enough legs to make it's budget back from ticket sales.

With a box office take just north of $38 million to date, Spider-Verse has made a little over one-third of its budget; and it's sure to fall faster than Miles Morales doing a nosedive off a skyscraper in its second weekend. Available in over 3,800 theaters (domestically) we have to question Sony's marketing methods. In comparison, Aquaman had it's preview weekend and an international release over the same time span and has raked in $206.3 million; eclipsing its production budget by over $40 million.

Spider-Verse has been widely heralded as a masterfully animated movie that is ripped from the pages of a comic book, with a heartwarming story, exciting action sequences, and lovable characters. So why are so few people going to see it?

Why aren't the Marvel fanboys and the anti-comics-gate crowd coming out in droves to support a movie with such a diverse cast of characters? There's a good chance that by the end of it's run, Spider-Man could inch past its production budget and maybe even reach $100 million. But that won't be enough for other studios to view this as a new alternative way to tell a superhero story. If you listen enough, you'll be convinced that Miles Morales has a huge following of fans but his story, along with Spider-Gwen and a host of others (including a pig) seems to fall short of getting the support it needed to be successful.

Yet here we are in a time when the "man who talks to fish" aka "Spongebob with powers" is soaking up dollars at the box office. Maybe the reviewers are being overly generous to Spider-Verse and it's not nearly as good as people are saying?

I can't wait to see it and find out for myself.