Lucasfilm’s Congratulations Card for ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Beating ‘Star Wars’ Is Pure Class

Box office records rarely feel truly permanent, but ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ spent more than a decade making its domestic crown look untouchable. J.J. Abrams’ 2015 relaunch of the franchise arrived during Disney and Lucasfilm’s high-profile return to the ‘Star Wars’ universe following the studio’s $4.05 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm, and it quickly became a defining moment for modern blockbuster filmmaking.

Tom Holland’s latest solo outing as Peter Parker has spent the better part of two months chasing that exact benchmark. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘ opened with a record-breaking $360.1 million domestic weekend back in July, and rather than fading the way most blockbusters do after their debut, it kept climbing, becoming the fastest film ever to reach $700 million, $800 million and $900 million domestically along the way.

That chase officially came to an end this week. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ has passed ‘The Force Awakens’ to become the highest-grossing movie of all time at the domestic box office, crossing $936.773 million after 47 days in theaters and finally overtaking the $936.6 million mark that had stood untouched since 2015.

Impressive. Most Impressive.

From a galaxy far, far away, everyone at Lucasfilm sends massive congratulations to Destin, Tom, everyone at Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios and the entire team behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day on setting a new domestic box office record and taking… pic.twitter.com/0GhXTwSbda

— Star Wars (@starwars) September 16, 2026

Rather than let the moment pass quietly, Lucasfilm decided to join in on one of Hollywood’s oldest traditions: publicly congratulating the film that just took its crown. The studio shared a graphic referencing its own franchise, with X-wings soaring overhead and the message “Impressive. Most Impressive.,” a nod straight out of Darth Vader’s own vocabulary, extending “massive congratulations” to director Destin Daniel Cretton, star Tom Holland, and the entire team at Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios.

That kind of public sportsmanship has become something of an unofficial ritual in Hollywood whenever a long-standing box office record finally falls, and Lucasfilm’s message fits neatly into that tradition. Given how long ‘The Force Awakens’ held onto its position, largely because Disney and Lucasfilm never gave the film a major anniversary re-release the way some of the ‘Star Wars’ prequels have received, the record’s eventual fall still carried real weight for fans who grew up watching it dominate the chart.

‘Brand New Day’s numbers extend well beyond just the domestic record. The film has now crossed $2.45 billion worldwide, placing it as the third-highest-grossing movie of all time globally, trailing only ‘Avatar’ at $2.9 billion and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ at $2.7 billion, while sitting ahead of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ and 1994’s ‘Titanic.’ It also stands as only the second film in history to surpass $900 million domestically, a distinction that had belonged exclusively to ‘The Force Awakens’ for nearly a decade before this summer.

Interestingly, when adjusting for inflation, ‘The Force Awakens’ technically still holds the edge, with its original total worth roughly $1.32 billion in today’s dollars given the 41 percent cumulative inflation rate over the past 11 years. Even so, in straightforward, unadjusted dollars, the title now unquestionably belongs to Holland’s Spider-Man, and given the significant gap now separating it from the rest of the all-time chart, that record looks likely to hold for a long stretch to come.

The final trailer for ‘SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY’ has been released.

In theaters on July 31. pic.twitter.com/D6Mh3fCjZN

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) July 21, 2026

With ‘Brand New Day’ still playing in theaters and continuing to add to its total, some have begun wondering whether the film could eventually become the first movie in history to cross $1 billion domestically, though that milestone would likely require a re-release given its current pace. For now, the film has already cemented its place in box office history, and Lucasfilm’s good-natured congratulations only add to what’s shaping up to be one of the most talked-about theatrical runs in recent memory.

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