Over the weekend, ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ swung past the 007 flick ‘Skyfall’ to become Sony’s highest-grossing movie of all time, globally. ‘Far From Home’ has now generated $1.109 billion, versus ‘Skyfall’s theatrical gross of $1.108B. ‘Far From Home’s take is split is $376M domestic and $733M international. Just a note, however, ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ made $404.5M in the US, but “only” $962M globally, so technically, it is still Sony’s #1 movie in the US. But Sony is planning to re-release ‘Far From Home’ at the end of August for Labor Day with four minutes of added footage.
This is a similar maneuver that Disney took with ‘Avengers: Endgame’ to push that film into the position of the highest-grossing movie of all time. Three weeks ago, ‘Far From Home’ swung past the $1B mark, making it the highest-grossing ‘Spider-Man’ movie, and the only non-Disney movie to reach $1B this year.
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As for that extra footage that is being added, rumor has it that it’s an action sequence. If it’s woven into the movie, that could be great, seeing as how with ‘Endgame’, Disney simply added what were essentially DVD extras, on to the end after the credits. (Strangely, one of the extras wasn’t included on the home video release.) This extended version of ‘Far From Home’ will begin rolling out on Thursday, August 29.
One would assume that this extended cut will only be released in US theaters, because it is being tied to Labor Day, which isn’t a holiday anywhere but in the US, and it really seems that the goal here is simply to make ‘Far From Home’ the highest-grossing Sony movie period, pushing it past ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’.
As for the rest of the world, a big boost came from China, where ‘Far From Home’ is the second-highest-grossing movie of the year, following ‘Endgame’, and Sony pushed it out in that country days before an embargo against foreign movies went into effect, meaning it was the last Western movie to really get a chance to stretch in China during mid- and late-summer. (Except for ‘The Lion King’, which was allowed to open in the middle of the embargo when two high-profile Chinese flicks were pulled.)
Of course, ‘Far From Home’ benefitted from arriving in the wake of ‘Endgame’– and being a humorous pallet cleanser after that emotional roller coaster. It also may have benefitted by the early summer being packed with would-be hits that crashed, like ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ and ‘Men in Black: International’.
Well, if you want to help ‘Far From Home’ climb even higher, it’s still playing in theaters, and as mentioned, the extended version will be released on August 29.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
