China Box Office: 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' Swings to $30M+ on Friday

The Sony superhero film launched in China on Friday, five days ahead of its North American debut.

Sony's Spider-Man: Far From Home is off to a phenomenal start in China.

The film had already crossed $30 million by mid-evening Friday in Beijing, where it opened five days ahead of its North American bow.

So far, local word-of-mouth is ecstatic for the Tom Holland star superhero installment. It has scored a 9.3/10 on ticketing platform Maoyan, and 8.3/10 from Douban, a more connoisseur-skewing reviews site — some of the highest scores for a superhero title in recent memory.

Far From Home also easily eclipsed the China opening day of its predecessor, Spider-Man: Homecoming. Homecoming launched to $23 million on a Friday in September 2017. Far From Home had the advantage of unfurling in China ahead of North America, however, whereas Homecoming didn't release in the Middle Kingdom until two months after its stateside start. Homecoming ultimately earned $116 million of its $880 million worldwide total in China.

Far From Home sees the return of Tom Holland as Peter Parker, who goes on a vacation in Europe with his friends only to be enlisted by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to help save the world. Jon Watts is back in the the director's chair for the feature, in which Jake Gyllenhaal joins the franchise as Mysterio.

Far From Home has plenty of room to build on its impressive start, thanks to the surprise cancellation of Chinese tentpole The Eight Hundred. The big budget Chinese war film, directed by Guan Hu, was scheduled to open July 5, but became a target of Beijing's censors during the Shanghai International Film Festival (for more on that story, see here).

The Eight Hundred was hotly anticipated among Chinese filmgoers, and likely would have steamrolled Spider-Man in its second frame. Instead, Far From Home will only have to contend with The Secret Life of Pets 2, which makes its late China premiere July 5.