Spidey to the rescue. While the million mark for theatergoers had remained elusive in the last few weeks, the likable action hero literally saved the day over the weekend. Spider-Man: No Way Home helped get ticket sales back up to seven digits.

Cinemas needed this push and Spider-Man delivered. The third installment of the Spider-Man series, starring Tom Holland in the title role, brought 971.000 fans to the screens between its opening date last Wednesday and Sunday night. This brings the number to 1,205.000 tickets, a 128 percent rise from the past week (with only 528.000). The cumulative box office is even higher – 11.9 million which is a 156 percent increase comparatively.

Fashion went on sale, so to speak, with House of Gucci in second place with 90.000 tickets sold and Encanto lowering the musical volume in third place with 51.000. Clifford, The Big Red Dog’s bark also got quieter in fourth place with 43.000 and it may be time to die for James Bond after all in No Time to Die, which brought in only 17.000 fans and rounded out the top five. But it has to be said that this is still a reason for applause since the last 007 adventure with Daniel Craig is in its 11^th week and never charted lower than the first five spots.

Overall, this year, German movie theaters counted 37.4 million tickets with 332 million in receipts so far. That is a plus of – respectively – 6,7 and 13,1 percent compared to 2020 but a minus of 64,7 percent compared to the pre-pandemic year 2019. Although this number has a disclaimer: in 2019 there were about 1000 more films released.

Austria re-opened their cinemas after a month-long lockdown and sold 152.000 tickets for 1,85 million euros. Spiderman led the pack here, too. With a lot of openings being pushed to last week because of the theater closures that began in mid-November, fans had an overwhelming choice. House of Gucci, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, Paul Verhoeven’s much-discussed Benedetta, the Norwegian romance-drama Hope, the Estonian Christmas movie Weihnachten im Zaubereulenwald (Christmas in the Magical Owl Forest), the mouthwatering foodie doc Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles, the fun action-adventure Gunpowder Milkshake starring Michelle Yeoh and Lena Headey, and finally Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter that has the surprising German title Frau im Dunkeln (Woman in the Dark).

Another film starring Olivia Colman, Mothering Sunday, is opening this coming Thursday along with the pandemically delayed releases Clifford, the Big Red Dog, the Canadian production Aline – The Voice of Love about a singer in 1960s Quebec, the Austrian film Monte Verità – Der Rausch der Freiheit, the Golden Globe-nominated Drive My Car and the long-awaited Matrix Resurrections. This last film is also opening in Germany on the 23^rd along with another eight new releases. Matrix Resurrections is expected to give Spider-Man a run for the top spot. But both movies are looked at as the light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel for the survival of many cinemas.