Superhero fatigue … maybe not quite as fatigued as advertised?
Spider-Man: Brand New Day had a huge opening weekend at the box office — not big by Marvel standards or Spider-Man standards, but by any measure in history.
Everyone expected the movie to do well, but not *this* well. In its opening weekend, the new Marvel blockbuster grossed an estimated $355 million in domestic theaters. That’s second all-time behind only Avengers: Endgame, which grossed $357 million in its opening weekend. Three million bucks more and it would have been the biggest opening weekend ever.
READ MORE: ScreenCrush’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review
Brand New Day also earned $573 million overseas, meaning its opening weekend total overall was $927 million worldwide. That’s the second-biggest total ever as well; again, behind only Avengers: Endgame. That film’s worldwide opening weekend still ranks as the clear #1 ever, with $1.2 billion.
Spider-Man’s opening is all the more impressive given the fact that the narrative around Marvel and superhero movies in general is that these films have passed their peak, are old-fashioned, are not what modern moviegoers are interested in. That may be true in some cases — the box-office results of titles like Thunderbolts* and Supergirl were still not great, and horror and sci-fi movies are generally outperforming superhero movies in 2026 — but Brand New Day’s massive earnings do suggest reports of this genre’s demise may have been as exaggerated as the ones that claimed Doctor Octopus killed Peter Parker back in The Amazing Spider-Man #700.
Brand New Day is the fourth Spider-Man film starring Tom Holland as the Friendly Neighborhood Wall-Crawler. (His previous Marvel film, 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, grossed $260 million in its opening weekend.) This opening box-office total all but guarantees Marvel and Sony will attempt to make at least one more Spidey with Holland and his cast, including Zendaya as MJ and Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds. Given the overall tenor of the critics’ reviews (90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience scores (an A CinemaScore), many people would want to see it as well.
