Box Office Success Of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Doesn’t Mean Movies Are Back Just Yet

Despite nearly two years of handwringing around the death of movies and overall box office concerns now in the middle of a pandemic, Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home could be the release the industry needed. With COVID Omicrom variant fears rapidly picking up steam, Spidey still hauled in $260 million at the box office — the second-highest total ever, only behind fellow Marvel movie Avengers: Endgame. That’s impressive with or without a global pandemic. But because of the nature of the IP-driven movie industry today, it’s worth asking what this is really a sign of.

It would be easy to say this film ushers fans back into theaters and is a clear sign that people want to be entertained in that setting once again. But there are worthwhile caveats there, too: It’s Marvel. People have been anticipating this movie for a year. It’s Spider-Man, who’s probably the most bankable single character in cinema today aside from maybe DC’s Batman (coincidentally has a movie coming out in 2022).

If anything, this is just a sign that people value Spider-Man and/or Marvel, not necessarily the movie experience right now. Sub in “anymore” at the end of the previous sentence if you’d like. Given the nature of most non-superhero box office openings in recent years (even pre-pandemic), it’s reasonable to wonder if the non-hero box office win is the only surprising thing that can happen with movies anymore.

Studios are aware of this dynamic as well, and have changed the way they use TV and social video to market all movies. While three of the 10 most-seen theatrical release trailers of 2021 were Marvel movies , according to data from iSpot, none were among the top five. Instead, those spots were owned by a mix of family-friendly films like Jungle Cruise, Encanto and The Boss Baby: Family Business, and IP-driven No Time To Die (James Bond) and F9 (The Fast & the Furious franchise). Spider-Man: No Way Home doesn’t even make the list until No. 18.

That’s a clear commentary on the Spider-Man point earlier (you don’t even need to spend TV ad dollars to tell interested fans that the movie is coming out; they know). But also part of a larger shift that could be the norm even after we leave the peak of this pandemic.

iSpot data shows that theatrical releases make up 1.00% of all TV ad impressions in 2021, which is a big increase over last year’s understandably low 0.59%. But it’s also well below levels from 2019 (2.18%), 2018 (2.41%), or 2017 (2.69%). It may be years before we see just how much of an anomaly the last two years are from a movie advertising standpoint.

At the same time, though, it’s not as if studios are avoiding advertising upcoming movies, Spider-Man or otherwise. They may just be approaching things differently in light of how online fandom behaves in an IP-driven era.

For instance, No Way Home set a world record as the most-viewed movie trailer when it debuted earlier this year. Data from Tubular Labs shows Sony Pictures’ upload of the initial trailer is already the fourth-most-seen video the studio’s ever uploaded to YouTube, and it’s only been up for a little under four months. Globally, Sony Pictures has 40 different YouTube videos around No Way Home that have garnered at least one million views.

Even more important, perhaps, is the sort of content that a character like Spider-Man can generate at no cost to the studios involved (in this case Sony owns the movie rights, but has a deal with Marvel that allows Spidey to exist in its own cinematic universe). In 2021 alone, Spider-Man and No Way Home have generated over 28.2 billion YouTube video views on 366,000 uploads (according to Tubular). And there are potentially billions more views out there for the movie and character as a whole, too, considering the fact that the film came out less than a week ago.

Whether or not movies are truly “back” is probably a question for several years down the road, but it’s also a little too nuanced for a single answer. Are those asking the question going to be okay with a response of “yes, but only for established mega-IP like Spider-Man?” And how much does that actually have to do with the pandemic as much as just shifting dynamics that were already at play before 2020?

Perhaps the best way to consider movies now is whether they “need” the theater experience. As someone who did go see No Way Home this past weekend, I’d argue I was all the better for watching in that setting. That doesn’t apply to all movies, though, so it’s not as if this is a blanket rebuke to streaming releases — which may still be necessary in 2022 despite studios being adamantly against it. Rather, it may lean movies into the tiered system that’s already been developing, with theatrical releases reserved for what studios believe are blockbusters in the traditional sense, and the rest “winding up” on streaming services.

Does that work? We’ll find out eventually, as is always the case.