‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Set for Huge Box Office Debut Without a Single IMAX Screen

The tracking numbers for ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘ have now pushed past the point where the superhero fatigue conversation feels worth having.

As flagged by Lets Cinema, the Tom Holland sequel is being projected to earn over $550 million worldwide on its opening weekend alone, a staggering figure made even more remarkable by the fact that it does not include a single domestic IMAX screen, all of which are committed to Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ for its exclusive theatrical window through August 14.

IMAX has historically added a meaningful premium boost to superhero openings, often accounting for a significant percentage of early ticket revenue. For ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ to be tracking at this level without access to those screens domestically is, as Lets Cinema bluntly put it, a statement. The film will screen in ScreenX, Dolby Cinema, 4DX, and other premium large formats, but the IMAX exclusivity block is a genuine competitive disadvantage the tracking is seemingly swallowing whole.

The presale data behind the projection is already history. Per Deadline, the film posted the best first-day U.S. ticket presales of any movie in five years, a benchmark matched only by ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ which launched those advances before going on to open to $260.1 million domestically and $600.5 million globally in its first weekend. The last time presale tracking pointed to this level of demand, it served as one of cinema’s greatest pandemic-era stories.

The comparison is not lost on industry analysts. ‘No Way Home’ earned its massive opening in December 2021 against a still-fragile theatrical landscape. ‘Brand New Day’ is opening in the height of the competitive summer marketplace, against a release calendar that has already produced multiple massive openings this year, and is still projecting numbers that would rival or exceed that December performance.

Sony confirmed the first trailer became the most-viewed trailer in history with 718.6 million views in its first 24 hours, surpassing the previous record held by ‘Deadpool and Wolverine.’ The second trailer, released in June, accumulated 590.8 million views in its first week alone, the second-highest trailer debut ever recorded by WaveMetrix. The marketing campaign has been operating at a frequency and cultural saturation that tracks with a film the studio believes is genuinely capable of approaching its predecessor’s totals.

The domestic presales have now crossed $40 million, with some models projecting a domestic opening between $228 million and $260 million alongside international numbers that would push the global opening well past that $550 million figure, potentially into territory that would make it one of the biggest first weekends in superhero history.

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ opens in theaters on July 31, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, with Amazon Prime member early screenings beginning July 29. For a franchise that is doing this kind of business without even getting near an IMAX projector, the ceiling once those screens open up later in the run becomes a very interesting conversation.

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