History books were torn apart and rewritten on Friday as Sony's heavily-anticipated tentpole picture Spider-Man shattered every box office record in its path with a jaw-dropping $41.4M opening-day gross exceeding even the loftiest industry expectations. The colossal figure set new records for biggest opening day, biggest Friday gross, and largest single-day gross ever which last year's megablockbuster Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has held for nearly six months. The wizard pic bowed on November 16 with an opening Friday of $32.3M and claimed the previous single-day benchmark with a Saturday haul of $33.5M. Spider-Man, by contrast, enjoyed a 28% mightier opening day gross. With almost nothing else in the marketplace generating traffic, the Sam Raimi-directed comic book film was able to secure a mammoth 3,615 playdates and an estimated 7,500 total prints.

Big-budget action films based on popular comic books tend to draw a disproportionately high percentage of their weekend audience on the opening day. In July 2000, the much-hyped X-Men debuted with a Friday gross of $21.2M which accounted for 39% of the weekend gross of $54.5M. Of course, that was also during a month when schools are out of class on Fridays while Spider-Man bowed during the academic year. Still, exit polls are very positive for the Tobey Maguire pic so a humongous Saturday gross is inevitable. For the weekend, Spider-Man could find itself with a record gross anywhere between $105M and $120M which would demolish the current all-time opening weekend record of $90.3M set by Harry Potter.

Preliminary estimates indicate that there actually were other films playing in theaters on Friday. MGM premiered its gang flick Deuce's Wild with just under $1M in its opening day and should collect roughly $3M for the weekend. DreamWorks offered Woody Allen's latest comedy Hollywood Ending and grossed $661,000 on its way to a $2M three-day take.

Among holdovers, Friday-to-Friday declines were 49% for The Scorpion King, 33% for Changing Lanes, a horrendous 70% for Jason X, and 47% for Life or Something Like It.

For a review of Spider-Man visit The Chief Report.

Be sure to check back on Sunday for the complete weekend box office report featuring official studio estimates.

Last Updated: May 4, 2002 at 2:30PM EST

Written by Gitesh Pandya