sixth highest-grossing film of all time, the third-highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada, the highest grossing Spider-Man film, and the highest-grossing film produced by Sony. It also became the first film to gross over $1 billion since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the highest-grossing film not to be released in China (one of the world's biggest box office markets). In 2022, Warner Bros released The Batman, a reboot for the Batman film series, and unconnected to the DC Extended Universe. It was a critical and commercial hit, with particular praise for the film being a 'grounded detective story,' Matt Reeves direction and Robert Pattinson's performance as the titular hero. It went on to become the second biggest pandemic debut, after Spider-Man: No Way Home. Morbius, starring Jared Leto and based on the Spider-Man villain of the same name debuted that April as another chapter in Sony's Spider-Man Universe. The film was critically panned and a box-office bomb. Variety reported that whilst the initial opening was hopeful for Morbius, 'The character is not nearly as recognizable to general audiences as Spider-Man, Batman or Venom, nor is the film clearly connected to a larger story like "Eternals" or "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings." Thus, "Morbius" wasn't expected to match the receipts for recent comic book tentpoles based on those characters.' Scott Mendelson further stated that Sony seemed to rely on the film's 'connection to the Spider-Man universe, the success of Venom and a misguided assumption that audiences were interested in villain movies. In May, Sam Raimi returned to the superhero genre with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The film was met with mixed-to-positive reviews and earned $187million on its opening weekend, becoming the eleventh-best domestic debut of all time, the best summer debut for a Disney release during the pandemic, and Raimi's best opening. In its second weekend, the film earned $61 million, becoming one of the MCU's biggest second-weekend box office drops. The 67% decline was attributed by Deadline Hollywood to the "bad word of mouth" on the film and its CinemaScore grade, while Intelligence saw more than 17% downsize of available seats for the film, resulting in a lessen showtimes which also led to the decline. In its third weekend, the film earned $31.6million, contributing to the 800-million-dollar mark at the box office