AMC Entertainment posted the highest total revenue of any single weekend in its 106-year history over the five days that Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened. The number of people who actually showed up was not a record at all.
The exhibitor said more than 10.2 million guests came through AMC Theatres in the United States and ODEON Cinemas internationally from Wednesday through Sunday. That is an enormous figure, but AMC’s own announcement describes it as the highest-attended weekend of the decade and the third highest-attended in company history, both domestically and globally. Two weekends in the chain’s past still drew more people through the doors.
The Record Is Money, Not Bodies
Every all-time mark AMC set this weekend is a revenue mark. Admissions revenue hit a company high, and each day from Thursday through Sunday set a single-day admissions record for that day of the week in AMC history. Higher ticket prices and a heavy premium format mix are what closed the distance between third place in attendance and first place in dollars. The chain also logged its highest-grossing Dolby Cinema weekend ever in the United States, across a circuit of roughly 850 theatres and 9,500 screens worldwide.
Concessions Beat Avengers: Endgame
Food and beverage was the other all-time record, domestically and globally, and it displaced the mark set during the opening weekend of Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Chairman and CEO Adam Aron framed the result as part of a pattern rather than a one-off, calling the film “the ninth different movie title since March to have a gangbusters opening-weekend gross.”
AMC Published Before Sony Finished Counting
The announcement went out at 7:29 a.m. Eastern on Monday and cited a media-reported $355 million domestic opening, which it called the second-highest domestic debut of all time. Sony’s Monday actuals landed later in the day at $360 million, passing Avengers: Endgame and making Brand New Day the biggest domestic opening in box office history. AMC was accurate for the hour it published in, but that particular ranking has since been overtaken. The same revision moved the worldwide opening to $932 million and pushed the full domestic marketplace to roughly $430 million for the weekend.
The Odyssey Still Owns The IMAX Screens
AMC’s weekend leaned on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey as well, which held the domestic IMAX footprint for a third straight weekend while Brand New Day played without a single IMAX screen. AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York ran around-the-clock IMAX 70mm showtimes Friday through Sunday. Demand held up well enough that AMC, IMAX and Universal Pictures have extended IMAX 70mm engagements into September at select locations. Together the two titles helped deliver the highest-grossing weekend at the domestic box office in industry history, based on admissions revenue.
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