Sony reports this morning that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse earned $51.75 million domestically on opening day Friday.
Overall, that registers as the top Sony Pictures Animation performance in history, and the third* best ever for an animated film, besting Toy Story 4‘s $47.4 million four years ago. Only Incredibles 2 ($71.3 million) and Finding Dory ($54.75 million) opened higher.
*Worth noting is that 2019’s The Lion King remake opened higher than all of them with $77.9 million, though Disney has referred to the photorealistic animated film as a live-action remake. Sony itself also considers Spider-Verse‘s opening to be the third highest among animated films.
Yesterday’s figure includes Thursday’s $17.35 million previews, but Friday’s true performance of $34.4 begins to significantly help narrow weekend projections as the film continues to perform on the bullish end of long range forecasts and well ahead of studio expectations.
The studio now projects $113 million for the weekend, though internal models continue to align with prior forecasts and indicate that $115 million to $120 million or slightly higher is achievable. That’s especially true with the film’s strong reception in play, having a 97 percent audience score and 95 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes as of Saturday morning.
Also opening this weekend, The Boogeyman posted $4.8 million on opening day. That figure includes pre-Friday previews of $1.1 million. The film looks to be on track for an opening close to $13 million this weekend as previously forecast.
As for holdovers, The Little Mermaid is easing less than expected in the wake of losing premium screens to Spider-Verse as its primarily female audience remains strong going into the second weekend. Disney’s remake added $11.8 million on Friday for an updated 8-day domestic haul of $157.4 million. That puts this weekend on a course for an early weekend estimate potentially north of $40 million.
Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 added $2.9 million on Friday and now stands at $315.4 million domestically. This weekend should ring up over $10 million as previously expected.
Rounding out the top five, Fast X posted $2.6 million to begin its third frame yesterday. It now stands at $121.8 million through Friday and could be heading for a third frame over $9.5 million. Universal projects $9 million.
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