‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Just Claimed the Second-Biggest Opening Weekend in Box Office History

Superhero movies have spent the past few years fighting an uphill battle at the box office, with franchise fatigue and a crowded streaming landscape making blockbuster-sized debuts feel like a thing of the past. Even reliable tentpoles have struggled to recapture the kind of frenzy that once defined the genre’s peak years.

Sony and Marvel Studios had reason to be cautiously optimistic heading into the release of ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ given Tom Holland’s track record with the character, but few were prepared for just how dominant its first weekend in theaters would turn out to be.

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ has opened globally with $875 million, officially making it the second-biggest opening weekend of all time, trailing only ‘Avengers: Endgame.’

That worldwide figure breaks down into a domestic haul of $355 million and roughly $550 million from international markets, a combination that vaulted the film past nearly every other release in Hollywood history in a single weekend. Only ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ which opened to $1.2 billion globally in 2019, sits ahead of it.

The domestic number alone is a milestone. At $355 million, ‘Brand New Day’ fell just short of ‘Endgame’s’ all-time three-day domestic record of $357 million, making it the second-biggest weekend opening in North American history and pushing Marvel Studios into an unusual position of holding the four largest domestic openings ever recorded.

The film also broke records on its way to that total, setting new all-time marks for preview screenings and opening-day grosses before the weekend was even finished. Its Friday haul of $168 million, boosted by early access screenings, pushed past the previous opening-day record that had also been held by ‘Endgame.’

Internationally, the movie’s rollout benefited from strong midweek starts in several major markets, including China, where it began playing days ahead of its North American release. That early start helped the film inch toward the billion-dollar mark well before completing its first full week in theaters, a pace that outstripped the majority of releases from earlier this year.

The achievement is especially striking given that ‘Brand New Day’ didn’t have the built-in nostalgia factor that fueled its immediate predecessor, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ which brought back previous big-screen Spider-Man actors for a multiverse-spanning reunion. This time, Holland’s Spider-Man carried the weekend largely on the strength of the character himself and strong critical reception, with the film pulling in a 98 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and an A grade from CinemaScore.

Combined with the continued success of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey,’ which added another $51 million in its third weekend of release, the two films helped drive one of the biggest collective box office weekends ever recorded, further reinforcing that audiences are still willing to show up for the right combination of spectacle and star power.

With projections continuing to climb as final numbers roll in, industry watchers are already speculating about whether ‘Brand New Day’ still has a shot at closing the gap on ‘Endgame’s’ long-standing global opening record. Even if it ultimately falls short, the film has already reshaped the conversation around what a modern theatrical release can accomplish in a single weekend.

For a franchise that some assumed had already hit its ceiling, ‘Brand New Day’ has proven there’s still plenty of runway left.

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