Spider-Man: No Way Home smashes its competition easily in its first week at the box office

Handily beating out its rivals "MSheU Phase 4," "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," the new "Black Widow" movie and "Eternals", the new Spiderman movie "No Way Home" raked in $253 million just in US sales in its first week in theaters.

"Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" so far has only grossed $224.5 million in a much longer period of time, in fact, over a month, and with little competition on the date of its release.

According to Bounding Into Comics, the global figures are even more alarming. The movie brought in a whopping $587.2 million so far, despite its not being shown in communist mainland China, as that country continues to crack down more and more on what can be shown to its citizens.

These numbers represent a new record, previously held by the then-long-awaited "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which also opened in December and reached $247.9 million in gross sales within its first week.

The worldwide record, however, has yet to be broken. It is still, at the time of this writing, held by another Spiderman movie, ironically enough. "Spiderman: Far from Home" grossed a whopping $1.3 billion in total during its theater run.

It remains to be seen if, even foregoing the Chinese market, "No Way Home" can match the $1.3 billion and perhaps even surpass it. Experts, however, see it as a distinct possibility. OMB Reviews wrote:

"If [Spider-Man: No Way Home] in those overseas markets is already ahead of [Venom 2 and F9: The Fast Saga] by 100 to 200 percent, we’re looking at a movie that is going to easily be able to pass a billion dollars and all of that without China."