Spider-Man: Brand New Day has achieved the biggest-opening weekend of all time for a film in Middle East box office history.
Empire Entertainment, the exclusive theatrical distributor for Sony Pictures across the region, said the film generated US$18.4 million at the Middle East box office.
United Arab Emirates contributed $7.4 million and Saudi Arabia delivered US$5.4 million, while the film also attracted record audiences across Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, according to Empire’s figures.
By comparison, Spider-Man: Homecoming achieved $5M on its opening weekend in 2017, prior to Saudi Arabia coming online as a major B.O. territory; Spider-Man: Far From Home opened on $7M in 2019, (2019) and Spider-Man: No Way Home took $15M.
The MENA release on July 30 was accompanied by a spectacular promotional event in Dubai over the weekend, in which a stunt-person dressed as spider-man scaled local landscape the Dubai Frame followed by a drone show.
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Over in Egypt, Empire joined forces with Skyvertise to lay on a 600-drone light show over the Pyramids of Giza to mark the film’s release.
“When a film performs this strongly, it tells us something crucial: audiences across the region are increasingly choosing cinema as their destination for entertainment,” said Empire Entertainment President Mario Haddad Jr.
“The remarkable success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day also marks an important milestone for Empire Entertainment as the 10th Spider-Man film we have distributed across the Middle East. It is a testament to the enduring strength of one of the world’s most beloved franchises and the excitement it continues to generate across generations. This result sets a powerful precedent for how we approach distribution going forward.”
He added that the regional success mirrored the film’s outstanding global performance. Spider-Man: Brand New Day debuted with an estimated US$355 million across the U.S .and Canada and US$927 million worldwide during its opening weekend, making it the second-biggest global opening weekend in cinema history.
Empire Entertainment is the exclusive theatrical distributor for Sony Pictures in the Middle East, and one of the region’s leading movie distributors, having represented a multitude of major studios for the past 100 years.
It also also distributes a multitude of Arabic movies, as well as produces and co-produces different projects to cater to the rising demand for diversified regional content.
