Nerve Endings Firing Away

As you might already know, Spiderman 3 will hit the theaters this weekend. The first two editions were massive hits. The first movie surprised everyone when it ended its opening weekend with a whopping $114 million. It was the highest box office opening weekend ever before being surpassed by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($135 million).

The movie went on to amass more than $821 million worldwide. The sequel surprisingly grossed slightly less ($783 million) than the first one but was nevertheless a box office success. These numbers are mind boggling and Sony Pictures are definitely sitting on a franchise heaven. But the success of these movies emboldened them to throw oodles of cash in the production of the third episode of Spidey tales. Spiderman 3 reportedly cost almost $500 million including marketing and promotion costs. Whoa! Although the success of this movie is almost a given and Sony will definitely recover its investment, $500 million seems a bit too much to throw at a 2-hour flick. The management of the movie’s shooting was in total mess and the movie ran months off schedule. But I guess all will be forgotten when the movie turns a profit.

Apart from relying on box office receipts and DVD sales, how will Sony recover its costs? Through merchandizing, of course. Spiderman is a product that is easily marketable to kids and even geeks. Sony is pulling out all stops to market the movie and harness Spiderman’s merchandising power. Couple of weeks back I got this email from Amazon:

Now who could resist that awesome stuffed toy, rock-on pose and all. But that’s not all. Sony is leveraging the Spiderman brand in almost all forms – board games, graphic novels, video games, soundtrack album, toys, comic books, etc. Note the not-so-subtle “Shop Now.” Take a look at the various options that Amazon offers to help Sony recover its colossal investment:

I am sure Sony will have no problem recovering its money but I hope its free-spending ways doesn’t spread to its other movies where chances of recovery might not be assured. After all, big spending is a habit hard to lose.