Italy’s Box Office Just Had Its Best July Ever, and Two Spider-Man Stars Are Behind It

Summer moviegoing in Europe has felt different this year, with theaters reporting numbers that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years back. While much of the box office conversation has centered on North America, some of the most striking numbers this season have actually been coming out of Italy.

That trend has been building for weeks, ever since Christopher Nolan’s sprawling epic ‘The Odyssey’ began its theatrical run and quickly became one of the defining releases of the summer across international markets. Italian audiences, in particular, have shown up in numbers that industry watchers weren’t fully expecting.

Now those numbers have added up to something historic. Thanks to ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ Italy’s box office just had its best July ever, with 7.7 million admissions breaking the previous modern-era record of 5.9 million set back in 2011, according to reporting shared from the Italian market.

That milestone becomes even more notable given the shared talent connecting both films. Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jon Bernthal all appear in ‘The Odyssey,’ giving the trio the rare distinction of headlining what became two of the biggest theatrical events of the Italian summer within the span of a few weeks.

‘The Odyssey’ had already been putting up massive numbers on its own before ‘Brand New Day’ arrived to compound the momentum. The Nolan epic crossed $300 million domestically in the United States alone during its second weekend, while its global total pushed past $666.7 million and continued climbing toward the billion-dollar mark.

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ then arrived and immediately began rewriting its own set of records. The film pulled in $72 million in Thursday preview screenings alone in North America, officially surpassing ‘Avengers: Endgame’s’ previous all-time previews record of $60 million, a number that instantly signaled just how dominant the film’s global rollout was likely to be.

That kind of momentum tends to ripple outward into international markets, and Italy’s July record appears to be a direct reflection of that pattern. With both films playing simultaneously across Italian theaters throughout the back half of the month, audiences had two major reasons to keep showing up week after week, something that hasn’t happened with this level of frequency in over a decade.

It’s also a notable comeback moment for theatrical exhibition more broadly. Modern box office numbers in most European markets have struggled to consistently match pre-pandemic benchmarks, making a record that dates back to 2011 particularly meaningful in terms of what it says about audience appetite returning to previous highs.

For Holland, Zendaya and Bernthal, the timing couldn’t be more fitting. Having just wrapped a run together in one historic release, the trio now finds themselves attached to another that’s helping push an entire national box office into record territory, a rare kind of one-two punch that speaks to just how big this particular summer has become for theatrical moviegoing.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!