Holy Frijoles...

Can you say, "148 million dollar opening weekend?"

Congrats to Raimi and his crew for once again tearing down the ceiling of expected grosses and setting the bar high for the rest of the summer. The gauntlet has been thrown: Can "Pirates" top it when "At World's End" premieres in three weeks? Or can "Shrek" when "the Third" opens in two weeks?

A few fun facts:

-Spidey 1's opening weekend take was $114 million, a record that stood until "Pirates: Dead Man's Chest" opened with $135 million last year. Spidey 1 was the first movie to pass $100 million in its first weekend, an achievement that is a little more commonplace now (in addition to Pirates 2, Episode III, Shrek 2, X-Men 3, and Harry Potter 4 all passed that mark in their opening weekend).

-Spidey 2's opening, with $88 million, seems positively meager by comparison, but it came out later in the summer, after a bunch of big movies had already bowed (Shrek 2 and Potter 3, for example), whereas Spidey 1, like 3, acted as the summer's leadoff hitter.

-The film that has held the #1 slot at the box office the past 3 weeks, "Disturbia," has, to date, made $59 million. "Spider-Man 3" made $59 million on ITS FIRST DAY.

I think the summer has begun. :)