The Big Picture

• Spider-Man Mondays re-releases are facing diminishing returns, with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperforming compared to earlier films.
• The 2014 film is considered one of the least-liked Spider-Man movies with a poor box office performance despite a high production budget.
• The series' pivot to Tom Holland's successful portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a more lucrative move for Sony.

Diminishing returns have begun to set in for Sony’s “Spider-Mondays” program, through which the studio is re-releasing each live-action Spider-Man movie in theaters over two months, in celebration of its film division's centenary. Now firmly in the second half of the run, with four movies having already been re-issued to varying degrees of success, Sony launched The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 466 locations nationwide this Monday.

Originally released in 2014, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is widely considered to be the least-liked of all the Spider-Man films, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 51%. It arguably has a worse reputation than even Spider-Man 3, in which many fans find redemptive qualities. The Amazing Spider-Man 2, overflowing with tertiary characters and over-reliant on franchise-building as it was, marked a step down from last week’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Also directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield as the friendly neighborhood superhero, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 netted $500,000 on Monday, for a per-theater average of a little over $1,000. Produced on a bloated budget of over $200 million, it ended its theatrical run as the lowest-grossing Spider-Man movie of all time, with $709 million worldwide.

By comparison, Webb and Garfield's moderately liked first The Amazing Spider-Man film generated $510,000 from the same number of locations last week. While this isn’t a number to scoff at, considering the low theater count and the Monday of it all, it’s significantly less than what Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s original Spider-Man trilogy was able to generate last month. The first Spider-Man film grossed $681,000 from the same number of theaters, for a per-theater average of nearly $1,500, while the Spider-Man 3 re-release grossed $760,000, also from 466 domestic theaters, for a strong $1,600-plus per-theater average. The top-performing film of the festival remains Spider-Man 2, which generated $805,000 for a per-theater average of around $1,700. This aligns with popular sentiment; Spider-Man 2 is easily one of the best superhero films ever made.

The 'Spider-Man' Series Has Grossed Nearly $9 Billion Worldwide

Raimi and Maguire were slated to return for a fourth movie, but the project was ultimately canned. Webb and Garfield were supposed to come back for future sequels of their own, but those projects were canceled as well. Sony chose to pivot to another reboot, while crafting its own internal cinematic universe simultaneously. Tom Holland was cast as Spider-Man for a new series of films directly tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while Sony proceeded with a rival franchise that grew to include two Venom movies, Morbius, and Madame Web.

Holland appeared in three solo Spider-Man films, each more successful than the last. The third movie, 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, remains the highest-grossing installment of the series, with $1.9 billion worldwide. It brought back Maguire and Garfield in a multiverse-hopping adventure that delighted Spider-Man fans across generations. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 also featured Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Sally Field, Dane DeHaan, Campbell Scott, and Paul Giamatti. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.