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Spider-Man Goes Into Record Books
| Spider-Man has become
the first film to hit 100 million dollars in its first weekend in
America. The live-action adaptation starring Tobey Maguire as the Marvel
Comics web-slinger shattered box-office records with a $114 million
debut, surpassing the previous best of $90.3 million taken in by Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone during its first three days last autumn.
With $39.3 million on Friday and $43.7 million on Saturday, director Sam
Raimi's Spider-Man also beat the single-day record of $33.5 million set
by Harry Potter in its second day, according to studio figures. "I don't think there's a distribution record in history that hasn't been shattered," said Jeff Blake, Sony president of world-wide marketing and distribution. "That 100 million dollars opening weekend has always been sort of a great white whale of the movie business. To have Spider-Man capture it is just thrilling." Spider-man made extensive use of the Mark Roberts Motion Control's Milo system for creating the "Spidey Sense" scenes, in which Tobey's supernatural senses allow him to sense danger outside of sight. All the shots were pre-visualised in Maya first to allow the director to get the feel of the moves exactly right. Additionally, Camera Control Inc. used the Gemini interface to give the Libra Pan-Tilt-Roll heads extensive motion control capabilities for creating the large New York sky-lines for Spider-man's extensive city flights. The Libra head was used from the Queensborough Bridge. Spider-man himself was Computer Generated onto the large New York city scenes.
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