With great power comes truly heroic ticket sales.
Sony and Marvel’s comic book adventure “Brand New Day” obliterated box office expectations, collecting a jaw-dropping $355 million from 4,300 North American theaters. It’s the second-biggest debut in domestic box office history, following 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” with $357 million, not adjusted for inflation. “Brand New Day” could end up eclipsing that record if Monday’s final tally lands above estimates. No other films have ever come close to surpassing $300 million in a single weekend. The third-largest domestic opening belongs to 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” with $260 million, followed by 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” with $257 million. Yes, Marvel Studios now boasts the four largest openings of all time at the domestic box office.
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Box Office: ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Breaks Opening Day Record With $168 Million
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‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Leaks Online: Millions Watched Bootleg Before It Was Taken Down
Sony spent around $225 million to produce “Brand New Day,” not including marketing costs. Destin Daniel Cretton (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) directed “Brand New Day,” which has garnered euphoric reactions from critics and audiences. It holds a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and “A” grade on CinemaScore exit polls.
Even with the craze surrounding “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” remained a draw with $51 million in its third frame. Together, they have fueled the biggest collective weekend in box office history with more than $406 million across all films. The top weekend prior to this was, of course, “Avengers: Endgame” ($402 million collectively) followed by “Avengers: Infinity War” ($314 million collectively).
Few in Hollywood had expected another movie to near the initial box office heights of “Avengers: Endgame,” which was touted as the epic culmination of 22 interconnected films. After the history-making finale of “Endgame,” Marvel experienced its first-ever bout of superhero fatigue with sequels such as 2023’s “The Marvels” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and 2025’s “Captain America: Brave New World,” “Thunderbolts” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” all disappointing at the box office. There were hits, like “No Way Home,” 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and 2024’s “Deadpool & Wolverine,” but audiences were no longer showing up to theaters just because a new superhero adventure was gracing the big screen.
“Audiences are tired of seeing the same thing. There are too many connected storylines, and it’s turning entertainment into homework,” says analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations. “We need a fresh start.”
That’s part of the appeal of “Brand New Day,” which confirms there’s truly no such thing as Spider-Man fatigue. This Spidey adventure was promoted as a reset in the web-slinging series. That’s after the prior installment, “No Way Home,” (which generated a mammoth $1.9 billion globally) ended on a massive cliffhanger: Tom Holland’s Peter Parker made the difficult decision to erase his identity from the world in order to save the multiverse, leaving his girlfriend (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) to forget about him. Demand — to find out the ramifications of Spider-Man’s fateful choice, and to be among the first to find out who Sadie Sink was playing in the film — was so intense that some locations of major theater chains were scheduling showtimes every 15 minutes from dusk to dawn.
Holland’s run as Spider-Man is the rare series to keep improving upon the last at the box office. His first outing, 2017’s “Homecoming,” launched to $117 million domestically and ended its run with $880 million worldwide. Then 2019’s sequel “Far From Home” ignited to $92 million domestically but powered to $1.13 billion worldwide. And of course, “No Way Home” was colossal with nearly $2 billion worldwide. That film was especially huge because all three Spider-Men — Holland, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield — shared the screen in a crossover event for the ages. Holland’s future with the character is uncertain (he said recently that a succession plan is already in the works) but it’s hard to imagine the studio will want to part with the 30-year-old actor after this historic weekend. Meanwhile, Marvel will build on the success of “Brand New Day” with “Avengers: Doomsday,” which reunites a smattering of superheroes (and reintroduces Robert Downey Jr. not as Iron Man but as the villain Doctor Doom) in December.
Elsewhere, “The Odyssey” has surpassed $911 million at the box office, including $395.5 million domestically and $515 million overseas. “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” will imminently be the fourth and fifth releases of the year to surpass $1 billion, following June’s “Toy Story 5” ($1.02 billion) and April’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” ($1.001 billion) and “Michael” ($1.001 billion).
More to come….
