SHOWBUZZDAILY BOXOFFICE: “Spider-Man” Starts Swinging At Midnight

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The first real numbers are in for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) in the US, and they’re… OK.

Amazing made $7.5M in midnight screenings last night.  This is nowhere near the Top 10 midnight openings (#10, Revenge of the Sith, made $16.5M), and it’s far from the $19.7M and $18.7M earned just weeks ago by The Hunger Games and The Avengers.

Sony is touting the spin that Amazing was even with the $7.5M earned by Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 in 2007, but that ignores the fact that midnight openings hadn’t really taken hold as a part of tentpole distribution 5 years ago (all the titles in the Top 10 except Sith opened in 2008 or later).

Of course, we’re just at the beginning of Amazing‘s long holiday week/weekend.  The last blockbuster to open in a week when the 4th of July fell on a Wednesday was the original Transformers in 2007.  That movie had a slightly different release pattern, in that it began with screenings earlier on Monday evening (which grossed $8.8M).  In its first full day on Tuesday–which didn’t have a midnight boost because of the shows earlier on Monday–it made $27.9M, on its way to a total of $155.4M by the end of Sunday. (Of course, Transformers didn’t have the benefit of 3D ticket premiums.)   Those are the numbers Amazing will be gunning for, even if Sony pretends not to expect to get there, predicting a very conservative $120M total by Sunday.