No surprises here, as Spider-Man: No Way Home continued to dominate the box office as 2021 came to a close. The blockbuster hit another huge milestone this week, breaking into the Top 10 of highest grossing movies of all time at the domestic box office, despite taking another pretty significant hit in attendance numbers. The box office overall saw mostly lower numbers than last week, and there are a number of factors that could contribute to that, including the holidays or the Omicron variant. With no new wide releases this week, a lot of last week's trends remained, but some movies took a bigger hit than others.
Check out the full Top 10 chart for the weekend below, and keep reading below for analysis!
| TITLE | WEEKEND GROSS | DOMESTIC GROSS | LW | THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Spider-Man: No Way Home | $52,700,000 | $609,891,855 | 1 | 4,206 |
| 2. Sing 2 | $19,600,000 | $89,680,785 | 2 | 3,892 |
| 3. The King's Man | $4,500,000 | $19,515,514 | 4 | 3,180 |
| 4. American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story | $4,075,000 | $15,005,000 | Row 3 - Cell 3 | 2,813 |
| 5. The Matrix Ressurections | $3,825,000 | $30,900,000 | 3 | 3,552 |
| 6. West Side Story | $2,100,000 | $29,570,609 | 5 | 2,690 |
| 7. Ghostbusters: Afterlife | $1,435,000 | $123,403,060 | 9 | 1,645 |
| 8. Licorice Pizza | $1,249,019 | $6,336,794 | 6 | 786 |
| 9. A Journal for Jordan | $1,175,000 | $4,740,000 | 7 | 2,500 |
| 10. Encanto | $1,050,000 | $91,352,581 | 8 | 2,425 |
Spider-Man: No Way Home Becomes Domestic Box Office's 10th Highest Grossing Movie Of All Time
The domestic box office haul for Marvel blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home continued to dip in its third week of release. After falling 69 percent between opening weekend and last week, the Jon Watts-directed film (which had some major star power) fell another 38 percent this week. But there's still plenty to celebrate. The film had a big hand in the domestic box office's 2021 total of $4.55 billion, Deadline reported, which doubled pandemic-plagued 2020's total of $2.28 billion.
No Way Home's $609,891,855 also propelled it into 10th place on the domestic box office's all-time highest-grossing movies list, surpassing The Incredibles 2, which grossed $608,581,744. The next two movies on the list are likely in danger, too, with Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi currently at No. 9 with $620,181,382, and the current No. 8 movie being The Avengers with $623,357,910. Even with a steady drop in theatergoers, that doesn't seem like too big an ask for the most successful movie since the pandemic hit.
Just how high will it climb though? Spider-Man: No Way Home has already hit a number of impressive milestones, on top of the ones mentioned above. It’s currently Sony Pictures Entertainment’s highest grossing domestic release in studio history, and the second Spidey movie (after Tom Holland’s Far From Home) to cross $1 billion. With new movies headed our way in the new year, will any of them be able to unseat the web-slinger?
Sing 2 And Ghostbusters: Afterlife Still Going Strong During The Holidays
After an impressive opening week, where Sing 2 handily beat out the critically divided The Matrix Resurrections and Denzel Washington's emotional drama A Journal for Jordan on its opening weekend, the animated sequel maintained its stronghold on the No. 2 spot. Of all the movies in the Top 10 that lost revenue from the previous week, Sing 2 dropped the least, falling just 12 percent from last weekend. In fact, its $19,600,000 weekend box office total more than quadrupled The King's Man, which earned $4,500,000 for third place at the domestic box office.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife, meanwhile, was the only movie in the Top 10 this week to see a weekend-to-weekend increase, jumping from No. 9 to No. 7 with a 17 percent rise. The Jason Reitman-helmed sequel is in its seventh week at the box office, and to see a jump in the rankings after this long proves this movie has some legs on it.
The Matrix Resurrections Falls In Second Week Of Disappointment
After The Matrix Resurrections' opening weekend disappointment — despite premiering on a Wednesday rather than a Friday — it was just more bad news for Warner Bros.' fourth installment of the Matrix franchise. In its second week, Lana Wachowski's film has still failed to meet the $55 million the studio hoped to pull on opening weekend, netting a two-week total of just $30,900,000. If there was any hope that audiences were waiting to see Resurrections this week, perhaps because many were still flocking to Marvel Studios' latest, those hopes were dashed, as the movie saw a devastating 68 percent weekend-over-weekend decrease.
With the holidays past, we've got a whole year of movies to look forward to, including the upcoming release January 7 of action thriller The 355, starring Jessica Chastain and Lupita Nyong’o. This month will also bring us the highly anticipated Scream — the fifth installment in the series that returns OG stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette. Which film this year will be the one to unseat Spider-Man: No Way Home as No. 1? Stay tuned to CinemaBlend each Sunday as we break down the box office.
