Okay, so here’s the thing about Spider-Man: Brand New Day: it opened without IMAX screens and still broke a box office record that had survived since 2019. Let that sink in for a second. The movie did not need the fancy screen to make big numbers. It is now getting one anyway, and honestly, at this point it feels less like a rollout and more like a victory lap.
The IMAX wait is finally over
For a movie doing numbers like this, it is kind of funny that Spider-Man: Brand New Day launched without IMAX at all. Why? Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey had the format’s entire domestic footprint locked down for three straight weekends, so the new Spider-Man had to open on regular screens across most of the world. The movie had the spot in China, South Korea and Japan, where The Odyssey did not land.
That is finally changing now. Sony and Marvel have confirmed the film’s entry into IMAX across North America starting this Thursday, August 6, right as the Odyssey’s exclusive run wraps up. IMAX has just over 440 domestic screens, and the two movies are now splitting that real estate. Though Nolan keeps every single 70mm location worldwide, so the IMAX presence of Brand New Day is mostly digital. A technicality, sure, but still a flex.
IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond pictured more Spidey fans experiencing the superhero’s movements of adventure on IMAX. The Spider-Man movies have pulled in more than $300 million in lifetime IMAX receipts, and Brand New Day is clearly here to take that number further. The international numbers are already backing him up: The China IMAX opening was the biggest in franchise history, and South Korea just logged its biggest IMAX opening weekend, period.
The Spider-Man: Brand New Day box office numbers are actually unhinged
This is the part everyone’s been talking about. Spider-Man: Brand New Day didn’t just have a good opening weekend, but it took a record that had stood since Avengers: Endgame in 2019 and just… took it.
The domestic opening landed at $360 million, surpassing Endgame’s $357.1 million, and that number climbed as the weekend went on. Spidey generated $360 million from 4,487 screens. Sony Chairman Tom Rothman put out a statement thanking everyone and noting, essentially, records are made to be broken, but he’ll enjoy holding this one while it lasts.
Globally? More than $900 million in a single weekend. More than $300 million domestic. That makes it the second-biggest global opening ever; only Endgame’s over $1 billion beats it, and it puts Marvel in the extremely unserious position of owning the four biggest worldwide opening weekends in history: Endgame, Brand New Day, No Way Home, and Infinity War. At this point it is not a franchise, it is a monopoly.
It also quietly cleaned up on the format side; new records for Dolby, 4DX, and ScreenX (the format it was actually shot for, which beat Deadpool & Wolverine’s previous best). And the reception isn’t just opening-weekend hype either, reportedly good critic scores and audience Cinemascore, which is the kind of word-of-mouth that keeps a movie alive in theatres for months instead of cratering after week one.
What this actually means for the new Spider-Man era
Worth sitting with this for a second: Tom Holland’s previous outing, No Way Home, opened to $260.1 million domestic and $587.2 million worldwide back in 2021. Back then, these were the numbers that felt untouchable because you had three generations of Peter Parkers on screen together. Brand New Day did not have that multiverse cheat code. It had a four-year wait, a Peter Parker the world perhaps forgot, but apparently, an audience that never once stopped caring.
With IMAX locked in and the film on track to clear $2 billion globally, a club maybe seven movies in history have ever been in, Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t just having a moment. It might be having THE moment. And if the whisper network around a potential Spider-Man 5 is anything to go by, “brand new day” really is just the opening line.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is available to watch on Jio Hotstar. Are you excited to watch Spider-Man: Brand New Day on IMAX? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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