The much-awaited superhero film, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is all set to release tomorrow and the advance has surprised and shocked the trade and industry. Everyone knew that the craze is tremendous. Yet, no one was ready for the scenes on the ticketing app, BookMyShow, from Sunday evening onwards. As soon as the bookings commenced in most theatres, shows began to get sold out in no time. The demand is such that exhibitors had to hold shows as early as 6:00 am, 5:00 am and believe it or not, even 4:00 am.
Shockingly, the exhibitors have hiked up prices enormously. Certain cinemas are charging as high as Rs 1000 and even Rs 2000. Yet, these seats were sold out within minutes! It proved how eager audiences are ready to be back in cinemas and that for an exciting product, they are willing to dig deep into their pockets.
So why is there such a tremendous craze for ‘Spider-Man No Way Home’? Firstly, it belongs to the exciting Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has a loyal fan following of its own. Out of the Marvel superheroes, Spider-Man is probably one of the most loved or maybe the most favourite of the viewers. All the previous ‘Spider-Man’ films have opened well and done record business. And this time, the excitement has gone many notches higher as Tom Holland, the actor playing the current Spider-Man, will be joined by the actors who played the superhero in the earlier films, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. This factor has made viewers very curious and excited as they cannot wait to see all three Spider-Man’s in one frame.
One of the earlier Marvel films, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ (2019), also had similar craze and it opened at Rs 53.50 crore. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ will not have such a record opening. However, it’s sure to collect more than Rs 25 crore. On day one, ‘Sooryavanshi’ (2021) earned Rs 26 crore and it remains to be seen if ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ can break this record. A few trade pundits are confident that it’ll cross even the Rs 30 crore mark.
The other release of the week, meanwhile is ‘Pushpa’. It’s a Telugu film starring Allu Arjun and Rashmika Mandanna but will get a huge release in the dubbed Hindi version. It looks like an exciting actioner set in the jungles. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, it’ll give a tough fight to ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. Though a lot is expected from the dubbed Hindi version, it’ll struggle to find an audience. Similar hopes were placed on the Hindi version of 2021’s first big hits, the Tamil film ‘Master’, starring Vijay. But it earned just Rs 3 to 4 crore in the Hindi version. ‘Pushpa’, hopefully, would go beyond that number.
