Spider-Man Brand New Day has delivered the second-biggest global opening weekend in cinema history, pulling in $927m (£687m) in ticket sales and blowing past its $225m production budget in a matter of days.
Only Avengers: Endgame, which opened to more than $1.2bn in 2019, sits above it. According to The Guardian, the film’s North American debut came in at $355m, making it the second-biggest domestic opening on record after Endgame’s $357m domestic debut. The original BBC report cited $335m; the Guardian and Deadline both put the figure at $355m, and $355m is the number used here.
Deadline Hollywood broke down the North American performance by day: roughly $168m on Friday, $101.5m on Saturday, and $84.2m on Sunday, spread across 4,487 theatres. The front-loaded Friday figure suggests demand was concentrated among committed fans rather than casual audiences drifting in across the weekend, which is worth watching as the film’s total climbs toward the $1bn mark.
A global haul that Spider-Man Brand New Day built market by market
The international performance was just as impressive. Distributor Sony Pictures reported $572m from more than 73,000 screens outside the US, with China contributing $121m. Screen Daily put the combined UK and Ireland opening weekend at £23.5m. The BBC’s earlier report cited a larger UK figure denominated in US dollars, and the discrepancy likely reflects a different currency conversion and a different scope of territory. Screen Daily’s sterling figure, covering the UK and Ireland together, is the more precisely sourced number.
Tom Holland and Zendaya, who are married in real life, headline the film as Peter Parker navigates a world that has forgotten he is Spider-Man, picking up a few years after 2021’s No Way Home. Reviews have been largely positive, with some critics calling it Holland’s best performance in the role.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige called the result ‘truly phenomenal’, adding that he was grateful to audiences for ‘coming out and experiencing our film the way it was meant to be seen.’
What the numbers mean for Marvel ahead of Avengers: Doomsday
My read is that this weekend matters well beyond the box office ticker. Marvel has had a difficult few years since Endgame. The Marvels and The Thunderbolts recouped their production costs but registered as disappointments for a studio accustomed to billion-dollar returns. Brand New Day suggests the franchise’s gravitational pull is still there when the right character, the right cast, and a coherent story are in place.
Avengers: Doomsday is due in December, and the pressure on that release is now, paradoxically, higher. Audiences have shown they will turn out in force. The question is whether Marvel can hold that momentum across two major releases in five months.
Spider-Man: No Way Home made nearly $2bn in total ticket sales, and Brand New Day has launched at a level that puts a similar run within reach, though it would need sustained legs rather than a front-loaded sprint.
The broader box office context is encouraging too. According to Box Office Mojo, Brand New Day sits fourth in the 2026 global rankings at $927m, behind Toy Story 5 ($1.065bn), Michael ($1.016bn), and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($1.011bn). The Guardian, citing Rentrak, reports that year-to-date domestic receipts are up 10% on 2025, though still 16% below 2019 levels. The North American box office is nonetheless on track to pass $10bn for the first time since that pre-pandemic peak.
That recovery has real momentum behind it now. The question for studios is whether they can keep feeding it, or whether Brand New Day is the high-water mark of a year that ran hot on franchise comfort and nostalgia.
Doomsday arrives in December. If Brand New Day is the warm-up act, the main event needs to be worth the wait.
