Sony’s “Spider-Mondays” festival is fully underway, with director Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 getting a re-release on April 22, a week after the studio held a similar one-day-only re-launch for Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie. And either because of its enduring quality — Spider-Man 2 is a classic of the superhero genre — or the growing interest around the “Spider-Mondays” program, the film ended up grossing more on Monday than its predecessor had a week ago. Sony will re-release each of its eight live-action Spider-Man movies every Monday across eight weeks, in celebration of Columbia Pictures’ centenary year.

Spider-Man 2 grossed $805,000 from 467 locations nationwide, for a per-theater average of around $1,700 — the highest of any film currently in release. This is an improvement over the $681,000 that the first Spider-Man grossed from 466 theaters nationwide just last Monday, with a per-theater average of nearly $1,500. Spider-Man 2’s $805,000 haul takes its running domestic total to $374 million, exactly two decades after it was first released in 2004. Widely regarded as an improvement over its already-adored predecessor, Spider-Man 2 is now considered one of the best superhero movies ever made. With Tobey Maguire reprising his role as the titular webslinger, the film introduced the memorable villain Doctor Octopus, played by Alfred Molina.

The film received acclaim for its emotionally resonant story and expertly choreographed action set-pieces, and sits at a “fresh” 93% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Spider-Man 2 won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and was also nominated in two other sound categories. It served as the second installment in Raimi’s Spider-Man series, which would continue with a third film in 2007. Sony had plans to bring Raimi and Maguire back for a fourth go-around, but plans were scuttled in favor of a reboot. Spider-Man 2 ended its global run with $795 million worldwide, falling short of the first Spider-Man’s $822 million lifetime haul.

The Spider-Man Films Have Grossed a Combined Total of Nearly $9 Billion

It remains the sixth-biggest live-action Spider-Man film, ahead of the two movies that Marc Webb directed with Andrew Garfield in the central role — The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Raimi and Maguire’s Spider-Man 3, which will be re-released next Monday, ended its global box office run with $894 million. The Spider-Man film series, including the two animated movies that Sony has released in recent years — Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — has grossed nearly $9 billion in global box office revenue.

Maguire and Molina reprized their respective roles in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which grossed over $1.9 billion worldwide in 2021, and remains the highest-grossing Spider-Man film of all time. No Way Home also brought back Garfield’s iteration of the character, with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man leading the charge. Raimi, on the other hand, returned to the superhero genre with the smash hit Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which debuted just a few months after No Way Home. You can grab tickets for the upcoming Spider-Man re-releases here, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

via Collider