‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Is Turning India Into A Ticket-Buying Frenzy Before It Even Hits Screens
Hollywood releases in India have had a rocky relationship with box office consistency since the pandemic reshaped moviegoing habits. Big franchise names still draw crowds, but the kind of mass hysteria once reserved for a handful of tentpoles has become increasingly rare in recent years.
That is exactly why the current wave of excitement around ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘ feels different. Tom Holland’s return as Peter Parker, under new director Destin Daniel Cretton, has been building buzz for weeks, and the numbers coming out of advance bookings are backing that energy up in a big way.
Pre-sales for the film are the biggest for any Hollywood release in India since the Covid era, and the second biggest of all time behind only ‘Avengers: Endgame’. It’s also projected that final day one advances could cross Rs 30 crore, with premium ticket sales alone nearing 4 lakh.
Independent trade tracking backs up that excitement. Reports indicate that national chains PVR INOX and Cinepolis have already sold 2,25,000 tickets combined for opening day and more than 5,50,000 tickets across the four-day extended first weekend, with pre-sales grossing around Rs 40 crore. As of the night of July 25, sales in those same two chains had crossed 2.40 lakh tickets for the opening day, with four-day weekend admissions reaching 6.25 lakh, amounting to roughly Rs 44 crore in advances.
The scale of this response becomes clearer when compared to recent competition. Trade reports note that the film has already surpassed the day one pre-sales pace of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’, with a target of crossing the 500,000 ticket mark in national chains. Some trade voices have gone further, suggesting the film’s overall advance could place it among the top five of all time across languages, with projected opening day pre-sales gross as high as Rs 35 crore.
Premium formats appear to be driving a large chunk of the demand. Ticket prices for premium screenings in Mumbai have reportedly climbed as high as Rs 2,690, with the highest priced show reserved for a 3D screening at a Bandra multiplex, while several other premium locations are selling seats above Rs 1,500. The film also will not receive an IMAX release, since ‘The Odyssey’ currently holds four weeks of IMAX exclusivity, which makes the premium format numbers even more notable.
With ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ set to swing into Indian theatres on Thursday, all signs point toward one of the country’s biggest Hollywood openings in years. Fans who have been counting down for Holland’s next chapter as the wall-crawler now have every reason to believe the wait is about to pay off in a very big way.
Do you think ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ can actually knock ‘Avengers: Endgame’ off its perch as India’s biggest Hollywood opener?
