The third battle of
the box office war? Other summer box
office behemoths.
The only real battle that Spider-Man
will face is Attack of the Clones. By
the time other big movies hit theaters,
Spider-Man should already have made most
of its money. Star Wars on the other
hand will have to face off against big
movie after big movie, week after summer
week. Attack of the Clones will be
attacked from all sides in the five
weeks following its release. There are
the movies mentioned above, plus The Sum
of All Fears, Bad Company, Scooby-Doo,
Windtalkers and Minority Report.
Spider-Man will face off against only a
few of those movies closer to the end of
its theater run.
Who will be crowned
the king of Summer 2002? The biggest
thing of all is how people react to each
movie. The fan bases are obviously there
for both Attack of the Clones and
Spider-Man. Both will benefit from
repeat viewings from the hard-core fans.
I have a feeling that Spider-Man will
also draw in more families, which can
mean great business for weeks to come.
AOTC could do better than Phantom
Menace, considering that some fans
didn't like Episode I but it still made
$431 million. Advance word is that
Episode II is much more to the liking of
those that have seen it. Spider-Man is a
comic book movie, which means big
drop-offs from week to week. But it is
also supposed to mean that it will drop
on its second day of release, and it
didn't. It actually did better!
The war of words between
Spider-Man and Star Wars fans will rage
for quite a while. Spider-Man fans will
cry victory once Clones opens to less
stellar results on its premier weekend.
But fans of Clones should have the last
laugh come the end of summer. Those of
us that like Spider-Man and are Star
Wars fans will just sit back and watch a
fierce battle between two strong powers.
This animosity between
fans of both sides could actually make
for a more lucrative summer box
office. I don't know if fans will go
over and over just so that their movie
can be the top grossing movie of the
summer, but it could mean the difference
between being number one and an
embarrassing number two.
A note for Star Wars
fans: Do you want Spider-Man to
defeat Star Wars? If not, go out and
show your support for General Lucas on
opening weekend and do the seemingly
impossible; Buy enough tickets for a
$115 million Friday to Sunday opening
(add Thursday receipts and Clones is
well on its way to box office glory).
A note for Spider-Man
fans: Do you want Spider-Man to
shock the movie world by beating Star
Wars for overall box office for summer
2002? Well, go out and see Spider-Man as
much as possible before Clones
premieres, setting the bar too high to
reach. No matter what happens I'm going
to enjoy everything that occurs over the
next few weeks. I am a bigger Star Wars
fan but I did enjoy Spider-Man very much
(gave it an A- in my review). As a movie
analyst, this is what I always hope for.
Some real competition between two major
movies. I was so thrilled to see that
Spider-Man opened so huge and I can't
wait to see what Attack of the Clones
makes on its first weekend. It's all
good!
And who knows, maybe we
will all be surprised and that other
spider movie, Eight Legged Freaks, will
beat both of these.