Spider-Man: No Way Home is closing in on another box office record, one currently held by James Cameron's Avatar.
No Way Home continues to lead the domestic box office in its seventh weekend in theaters, the earnings for which put the Marvel Studios/Sony Entertainment film's total domestic box office at $735.9 million. According to Deadline, No Way Home only has to earn $24.6 million more before it surpasses Avatar's third-place domestic box office record of $760.5 million.
This also marks No Way Home's sixth out of seven weekends at No. 1 after the Tom Holland-led film was briefly dethroned on the domestic front during the opening weekend of Scream. At its current pace, No Way Home is set to catch up with Avatar, which would put Cameron's 2009 sci-fi drama in the same camp as Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. In only its second weekend in theaters, No Way Home passed the domestic box office total for The Dark Knight, which remains Warner Bros.'s highest-grossing film ever with $534.8 million.
Avatar currently holds third-place of the all-time domestic box office record, coming in behind Avengers: Endgame in second place, which earned $858.3 million stateside, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in first, which raked in a whopping $936.6 million. However, while the Spider-Man threequel may be vying for its domestic third-place spot, Avatar still remains the highest-grossing film of all time.
Spider-Man: No Way Home has consistently broken box office records since its exclusive release in theaters, becoming the first pandemic-era film to cross $1 billion globally, with its current worldwide total sitting at $1.74 billion. While No Way Home raked in $587.2 million worldwide in its first weekend, the film's opening day alone set a precedent for the subsequent records, making it the second-highest opening day of all time with $121.5 million, behind Avengers: Endgame. Currently, No Way Home is the sixth highest-grossing film of all time and is among the top 10 highest-earning North American releases in history.
While No Way Home has proven successful at the box office despite the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the surge of the Omicron variant, Sony's upcoming Marvel film, Morbius, saw its release date delayed from Jan. 28 to April 1. Recently, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar addressed whether the Omicron surge would similarly affect the release of Matt Reeves' The Batman. "We're certainly paying attention to everything going on with Omicron," said Kilar. "We feel good about the date right now. We're gonna watch it day by day."
Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently playing in theaters.
Source: Deadline