Weekend In Review: SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING Swings Away With $116M

Welp, no surprises here: Spider-Man: Homecoming just had a big-ass weekend at the box office, pulling in an estimated $116M, and the eggheads who actually understand how the box office works are predicting that it'll clear the $300M mark by the time it ends its run. Audiences love the film, critics love the film (it's currently sitting at an excellent 93% on Rotten Tomatoes), and everyone involved - from Marvel (delivering yet again in the "quality control" department) to Sony (who look uncommonly reasonable for letting Marvel come over and play with their toys) to director Jon Watts (who, by the way, deserves every bit of mega-success headed his way) - are coming out of this thing looking brilliant. 

Indeed, Spider-Man: Homecoming represents a scenario rarely seen in Hollywood - one wherein everybody wins. Well done, folks.

Here's some more good news: Edgar Wright's Baby Driver maintained a strong hold at the box office, slipping just 38% from its first-week take. So far it's earned about $57M here in the States, and looks like it'll be hanging around the top ten for some time. We celebrate the success of a movie like Homecoming because the movie itself is great. With something like Baby Driver, we get the added bonus of celebrating the success of a film that's a true original. Cheers to you, Edgar Wright. 

And finally: holy shit, Transformers: The Last Knight is not doing so hot, you guys. Sitting at just $119M in its third week of release (and coming in behind Wonder Woman, which was released a full three weeks before Bay's latest), we seem to be seeing the death knell of the Transformers franchise amongst American audiences. Oh, sure, it'll clean up overseas - a fact that all but guarantees we'll never see the end of this franchise - but Stateside it appears that we, as a people, have decided that roughly fifteen hours' worth of Robots Punching Robots Into Smithereens is quite enough, thank you. 

Final note: new Twin Peaks tonight. The Birth.Movies.Death. crew is hyped about it and looking forward to it is pretty much all we have planned for today. What're you folks up to? Sound off in the comments below.