Broken Frontier

Following its extremely good debut across Asia, Spider-Man 3 went on to set opening-day records in various European countries, including France and Italy. Overall, the film has set records in 10 of the 16 markets it was released in, reeling in $29.2 million, a whopping three million more than the first two franchise members combined.

Excerpts from the Variety report are reprinted below...

Movie broke Italy's all-time opening-day record, scoring $4 million on 900 screens in its Tuesday bow. That pulverized the existing record of $2.5 million held by "The Da Vinci Code" and tripled the day-one takes of Spidey's two previous installments.

Sony spent some $3.3 million on marketing "Spider-Man 3" in Italy, about the same as it invested to launch the franchise's previous installments. A splashy Rome bow on April 24, with stars and helmer Sam Raimi in tow, gave pic a big boost.

"This is a nice surprise, which bodes well for what promises to be Italy's biggest summer ever," Sony Pictures Italia topper Paulo Simoes told Daily Variety.

In France the movie raced to a boffo first-day take of $6.8 million off 778, beating the mark set by the last pic in the "Star Wars" franchise.

According to Gallic box office compilers CBO, the first-day admissions figure of 175,334 is the highest ever for the Paris region, comfortably ahead of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," which drew 124,664 admissions at 52 in 2005.

In Germany, "Spider-Man 3" grossed $4.6 million from 486,571 admissions on its first day. That puts it on track to easily match the success of the two earlier pics. "Spider-Man" took $1.6 million in its first four days in the country, while "Spider-Man 2" garnered $10.3 million over four days.

"The warm weather in Germany is not exactly movie-enhancing, but we're very happy with the results," Sony's local managing director, Martin Bachman, told Daily Variety.

Pic also saw the biggest opening day ever in Belgium and in Egypt.