10 Biggest Superhero Movie Opening Weekends Of All Time

6. Spider-Man 3

Release date: May 4, 2007

Opening weekend total: $151.1 million

After dipping a bit with Spider-Man 2, the Raimi/Maguire Spider-Man series rediscovered its mojo for the opening weekend of Spider-Man 3. The same can’t be said for the movie as a whole thanks to an overstuffed cast of characters and the infamous Emo Peter Parker sequence, but there was enough goodwill built up by May of 2007 that it didn’t hurt the movie in its first three days.

To date, this is the best opening weekend for a superhero movie not distributed by Disney (for the MCU) or Warner Bros., so it’s got a place in history for now. Fox could dethrone it with an X-Men movie or even Deadpool 2, but there don’t appear to be many other threats to this particular throne on the horizon — though the new Tom Holland Spider-Man reboot might qualify, depending on how you feel about its status as a Sony/Marvel co-production.

It’s interesting to do the “What if?” thing about this particular version of the wall-crawler continuing as opposed to Sony’s decision to reboot with The Amazing Spider-Man, but since all involved were pretty clear that this would be the end of its particular series, we’ll never know if the mediocre reviews it got would have hamstrung the opening of a Spider-Man 4.

Next: 5. The Dark Knight