What Spider-Man’s Huge Debut Means for AMC’s Future

The lines wrapped around the block. Fans in homemade web-shooter gloves and old comic shirts packed the lobbies, and popcorn ran low by midafternoon. Across North America this past weekend, Spider-Man: Brand New Day did exactly what a true event movie is supposed to do. It put theaters back at the center of the culture. AMC said it had its highest-revenue weekend ever and drew more than 10.2 million moviegoers. The film opened to about $355 million domestically and nearly $927 million worldwide, making it the second-biggest U.S. debut on record. Holdover titles like The Odyssey helped keep auditoriums full, and the movie is set to expand into more IMAX screens starting August 6. That matters for AMC, but only in a limited way. A blowout weekend doesn’t fix a theater chain’s balance sheet overnight. But it does give the company a stronger case that demand is real, theaters still move people, and its recent efforts to push out debt deadlines were not just wishful thinking. That distinction is important. in the financial world, bond investors care less about one headline weekend than they do about whether the business can keep producing cash and avoid stress on its near-term obligatio...