Sony/Marvel Studios’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” has broken a record once believed to be unreachable, passing the $936 million unadjusted total of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” to become the highest grossing film in the history of the U.S./Canada box office.
The latest “Spider-Man” film starring Tom Holland began its road to this record with a $360 million domestic opening that topped “Avengers: Endgame” for that all-time record, but given that “Endgame” had fallen short of “The Force Awakens” with $858 million grossed, that opening wasn’t a guarantee that it could leg out the way the first “Star Wars” film after a decade-long gap legged out during the 2015 holiday season.
But aside from “The Odyssey,” “Spider-Man” became the only hot title at the box office in August, pushing that month’s business to an all-time high of $1.2 billion. The film has now crossed the “Force Awakens” record on its seventh Tuesday, with $2.45 billion grossed worldwide.
“Brand New Day” is the culmination of a decade of work by Sony, Marvel, and most of all, Tom Holland, who took on the most famous superhero in cinema and made it his own as a Peter Parker who has grown from a bright-eyed teenager to a man who has dealt with sacrifice and loss.
That saga of growth and struggle came to a head in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” a film that grossed $1.9 billion in 2021 despite a lack of Chinese release and a COVID-19 outbreak thanks both to its crossover-filled storyline that brought back actors from previous “Spider-Man” films and its moving ending in which Peter Parker was forced to erase himself from the memories of everyone on Earth, including his friends MJ and Ned.
Fans have waited five years to see Peter deal with the consequences of that sacrifice, and “Brand New Day” delivered on that wait as Peter tries to start over with a memory-erased MJ and Ned while taking on a new threat from a mind-controlling mutant who turns out to be future “X-Men” cast member Jean Grey.
The result was glowing word-of-mouth and wild anticipation that surprised even the Sony execs who have worked on “Spider-Man” for years.
“Just think of everything our industry has been through with the pandemic, and then even more so with the strikes. The challenges theaters have faced have been so immense,” Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman told TheWrap on opening weekend. “‘Endgame’ came out in a completely different world. I truly didn’t think we would ever see any film open to $350 million domestic again.”
The thing is, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” spent more than a decade atop the all-time U.S. charts, but the reign of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” may only last a few months.
More than three months out from its release, Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Doomsday” has already racked up $50 million in presales and has become Disney’s most-watched trailer of all time across social media platforms. While the presence of a wide range of other holiday titles including Warner Bros./Legendary’s “Dune: Part Three” will limit how much theaters can add screen times to meet demand, there is a good chance that “Doomsday” could post an even higher opening weekend than the $360 million of “Brand New Day.”
If “Doomsday” delivers on the wild hype it has instilled among MCU fans and convinces lapsed moviegoers who have stopped watching Marvel over the last three years to come back, the holiday season with its ability to make films leg out even better than the summer could allow the upcoming blockbuster to pass “Brand New Day” both domestically and globally.
After several years of flops and underperformers, the MCU’s return to box office dominance has only just begun.
