Despite being banned in yet another country (in this case Pakistan), The Da Vinci Code is eating up the worldwide box office. With its third weekend of release behind it, Da Vinci has now soared to a worldwide box office of $582 million. The really interesting thing about that number is that 70% of it was made outside the United States, where Da Vinci has already fallen out of the top two.
Worldwide banning has worked wonders for the film, as it races towards becoming Sony’s highest ever international grosser. The company’s previous overseas champs were Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, which made $417 million and $410 million respectively. Variety predicts that Da Vinci will pass both of those movies rather easily later this week.
That’s right, The Da Vinci Code is a bigger hit than Spider-Man, though you wouldn’t know it from the reaction in America. Stateside it’s performed well, but nowhere near the level of a monster hit like Spidey. It’s a different world outside the USA, where X-Men: The Last Stand is expected to top out around the same modest international box office totals of X2, which were in the range of $193 million.
