“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” surpassed $1 billion globally in near-record time.
Sony and Marvel‘s comic book adventure, starring Tom Holland as the web-slinging hero, notched the milestone after six days of release, a mind-boggling pace. Only 2019’s superhero epic “Avengers: Endgame,” which captured a stunning $1.2 billion worldwide in its opening weekend, was faster to the coveted box office benchmark.
“Brand New Day,” Holland’s fourth solo outing as Spider-Man, has been defying box office expectations with $360 million in its domestic debut and $932 million globally. Those stratospheric ticket sales were the biggest domestic debut in box office history, as well as the second-largest global debut of all time. Spidey’s latest venture also secured the best preview haul with $72 million, as well as the highest-grossing opening day with $169.8 million. With euphoric word-of-mouth and minimal competition in the weekends ahead, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” will quickly climb to $2 billion, a metric that only seven other movies have ever achieved, and should rank among the highest-grossing films of all time by the end of its theatrical run.
“I did not expect “Endgame’s” [domestic] record to be beat, but I couldn’t be happier that it was beat this past weekend by our 38th MCU movie,” producer and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Variety. “It’s overwhelming, frankly, to find ourselves in this position on a Monday morning — in the very best way.”
Marvel will build on the triumph of “Brand New Day” with “Avengers: Doomsday,” which reunites a smattering of superheroes (and reintroduces Robert Downey Jr. not as Iron Man but as the villain Doctor Doom) in December. Feige notes that “Brand New Day’s” outsized success “bodes very well” for upcoming MCU adventures.
“When a shared universe works,” he said, “these are the results.”
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is the fourth movie of the year to earn $1 billion, following “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” ($1.001 billion), “Michael” ($1.001 billion) and “Toy Story 5” ($1.067 billion). Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has grossed a remarkable $912 million to date and is about to be the fifth release of 2026 to join the billion-dollar club.
It’s only August, and 2026 has already produced the most billion-dollar blockbusters since the pandemic upended the movie theater industry. In 2019, before everything changed, a record nine movies (“Avengers: Endgame,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” “Joker,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “Captain Marvel” among them) — earned over $1 billion. Since then, no year had more than three films that hit the billion-dollar mark.
This year is barreling toward all kinds of box office benchmarks. Depending on the staying power of “Brand New Day” and “The Odyssey,” Hollywood is hoping that this will be the second summer season since COVID to cross $4 billion in domestic ticket sales. Meanwhile the industry is optimistic that, with tentpoles like “Dune 3” and “Avengers: Doomsday” still to come, overall domestic revenues in 2026 will eclipse $10 billion for the first time since 2019. It’s a tally that the North American box office used to regularly reach in the before times.