‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and ‘The Odyssey’ Set to Deliver the Biggest Box Office Weekend in History

Superhero movies have had a rocky few years at the box office, with underwhelming turnouts for several recent Marvel releases fueling plenty of speculation that audience fatigue had finally caught up with the genre. That narrative is about to get a serious reality check.

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ arrived in theaters this week carrying enormous expectations, and early indicators suggest it’s living up to every bit of the hype. Tom Holland’s fourth solo outing as Peter Parker has spent the past several weeks watching its own box office projections climb dramatically higher than anyone initially anticipated.

Just weeks ago, conservative estimates from Sony pegged the film’s domestic opening somewhere in the $190 million to $195 million range. Now, according to Variety, bullish industry trackers believe a debut north of $300 million isn’t out of the question, a threshold only one film in history has ever crossed.

That film is ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ which set the all-time domestic opening weekend record back in 2019 with $357.1 million. If ‘Brand New Day’ manages to clear the $300 million mark, it would become just the second movie ever to reach that milestone, instantly placing it among the biggest openings the industry has ever seen.

Deadline’s tracking data, described as the most conservative among major trade outlets, currently has the film’s three-day domestic opening somewhere between $180 million and $190 million, while other trackers have painted a far more aggressive picture. Box Office Pro has suggested a range as high as $230 million to $250 million, and Global Box Office’s tracking has climbed to a projected $260 million to $300 million domestically.

That surge in projections has been fueled largely by extraordinary advance ticket sales. Deadline reported the film posted its best first-day presales in five years, a benchmark last reached by ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ back in 2021, with domestic presales alone reportedly surpassing $60 million ahead of opening weekend.

Globally, the numbers look even more staggering. GlobalBoxOffice’s tracking figures point toward a worldwide opening weekend approaching $800 million, according to Dark Horizons, which would rank as the second-biggest global debut in box office history behind only ‘Endgame’s’ massive $1.2 billion opening.

Part of what’s driving that international strength is the film’s day-and-date release in China, a market ‘No Way Home’ never actually reached after regulators objected to its climactic use of the Statue of Liberty. That absence left Chinese audiences without a new Holland-led Spider-Man film since 2019’s ‘Far From Home,’ and early Chinese box office numbers have reportedly been exploding as a result.

‘Brand New Day’s’ momentum arrives at a particularly meaningful moment for the superhero genre as a whole. Following a stretch since 2024’s ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ in which Marvel struggled to match its earlier blockbuster consistency, a genuinely record-threatening opening for ‘Brand New Day’ would send a clear signal that audiences haven’t actually abandoned comic book movies.

Whether the film ultimately lands closer to the conservative estimates or the more bullish projections approaching $300 million domestically should become clear once actual Friday numbers roll in. Either way, with reviews sitting around 89 percent among critics and reports suggesting the film could finish its run near $2 billion globally, ‘Brand New Day’ already looks like one of the defining box office stories of the year.

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