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Disney's (DIS) Spider-Man Crosses $1 Billion Mark at Box Office

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The Walt Disney (DIS - Free Report) -owned Marvel Studios and Sony’s (SONY - Free Report) co-production Spider-Man: No Way Home became the first movie amid the pandemic to cross the $1-billion benchmark at the global box office in 2021, per a latest report from Bloomberg.

The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film reached a whopping $1.05 billion at the box office over the Christmas weekend, beating the Chinese film The Battle of Lake Changjin released in November 2021.

Spider-Man earned an estimated $81.5 million in domestic tickets sales in the second weekend of its release. The superhero movie grossed $467.3 million from the North American theaters and an additional $587.1 million from the international markets.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, released in 2019, was the last movie to reach $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales.

 

IMAX Benefits From Disney’s Blockbuster Release

The movie, which has been filmed with IMAX’s (IMAX - Free Report) certified digital cameras, was shown in IMAX theatres, in IMAX’s exclusive 1.90:1 expanded aspect ratio for the entire length of the film. This is in lieu of Disney and IMAX’s collaboration, enabling consumers to watch several Marvel movies in IMAX’s Expanded Aspect ratio format.

IMAX took a huge bite out of the global box office in the third weekend of December, as Disney and Sony’s Spider-Man delivered $36.2 million on approximately 834 IMAX screens across 77 global markets, which included $22 million in North America.

Spider-Man’s Latest Success Offers Merchandise Sales Opportunity

Marvel Comics sold the film rights of Spider-Man characters to Sony in the 1990s. In 2015, however, Sony and Disney entered into a deal that stated that the Marvel Cinematic Universe could incorporate Spider-Man in its movies, with Sony retaining the rights. Disney and Sony renegotiated this deal in 2019, splitting production costs and box office receipts.

Thus Disney, which owns Marvel Cinematic Universe, will in all probability not earn any money out of the movie’s box-office receipts. Instead, the company’s main source of profits from this successful Marvel venture will primarily come from merchandise sales.

Merchandise sales for the Spiderman franchise have tracked box-office receipts in the past. It has been observed that the sale of Spiderman merchandise is directly proportional to the success of a Spiderman movie.

This is expected to drive Consumer Products revenues. In fourth-quarter fiscal 2021, revenues from Consumer Products decreased 3% year over year to $1.28 billion. This was due to low royalties earned from the game titles — Marvel's Avengers and Twisted Wonderland.

Zacks Rank and a Stock to Consider

Currently, Disney holds a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

One of the top-ranked stocks in the Consumer Discretionary sector is Funko (FNKO - Free Report) , which sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
 
Funko, engaged in manufacturing a wide range of consumer products, has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 110.7%, on average.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Funko's current financial-year sales and EPS suggests an increase of 48.3% and 240.5%, respectively, from the year-ago period’s tallies. FNKO has a long-term earnings growth rate of 27.71%.

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