‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ opens to a huge US$927 million global box office

[LOS ANGELES] Spider-Man: Brand New Day brought in a blockbuster US$927 million in worldwide ticket sales, including US$355 million in the United States and Canada, to deliver the second most lucrative opening weekend of all time for a film, both domestically and globally.

The movie, which marks actor Tom Holland’s fourth outing as the web-slinging superhero, depicts Peter Parker fighting crime in a world that has forgotten he is Spider-Man. Zendaya co-stars as MJ, the love of Parker’s life. Audiences returned for a film that was grounded in Parker’s struggles with loneliness and his pursuit of human connection.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day is fundamentally a movie about friendship, about the balm of connection in all our lives, and that is resonant to audiences of all ages and all around the world,” Tom Rothman, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, said.

Data from Rentrak indicates Spider-Man: Brand New Day had the highest domestic gross opening since the Covid-19 pandemic and the second-highest of all time, in North America and worldwide, behind the 2019 release of the superhero film Avengers: Endgame. That film raked in an inflation-adjusted US$1.6 billion in global ticket sales, including US$467 million in the United States and Canada, in its opening.

Internationally, Spider-Man: Brand New Day grossed US$572 million in opening weekend ticket sales, with China leading international markets with US$121 million in ticket sales, according to the studio.

Spider-Man is one of the most popular of Marvel’s comic book characters, with a cinematic appeal that endures even as audiences have shown signs of fatigue with the superhero genre. The latest installment has been well-received, scoring a 90 per cent rating from critics and 98 per cent approval from movie-goers on Rotten Tomatoes.

Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends for Rentrak, said on Friday (Jul 31) that the franchise is approaching the US$10 billion mark in unadjusted worldwide theatrical box office, which speaks to the character’s appeal.

Greg Durkin, the founder and CEO of the entertainment research firm Enact Insight, said that the movie’s central themes of loneliness and isolation, and triumphing over drama, resonated especially with Gen Z filmgoers.

“There’s a mental health crisis now with young people in our country – it’s especially acute for young men right now. There’s a friendship crisis,” Durkin added. “The pandemic created a bunch of shock-wave effects that we haven’t fully documented, much less addressed. This movie touches on some really important themes.”

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The performance of Spider-Man: Brand New Day fuels an already-robust summer box office, which has been buoyed by such major releases as Toy Story 5 and The Odyssey.

Dergarabedian said on Sunday that the combination of Spider-Man: Brand New Day with another hit, The Odyssey, created the “all-time biggest domestic weekend” in movie theatres.

“There’s no better lead-in to this movie than The Odyssey,” Dergarabedian noted. “Think of how many people around the world were in movie theatres being exposed to trailers marketing for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

Holland, Zendaya and Jon Bernthal appear in both movies.

The overall domestic box office performance remains below pre-pandemic levels. Year-to-date receipts are up 10 per cent from last year, but 16 per cent below 2019, the year before the pandemic struck, according to Rentrak. REUTERS