Tom Holland’s fourth solo outing as Peter Parker just did something no film has managed in over a decade. Spider-Man: Brand New Day passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing domestic release in box office history, hitting $936.8 million in North America after 47 days in theaters, edging out The Force Awakens’ decade-old record of $936.6 million. Sony’s own Instagram account marked the moment plainly: “Doesn’t get bigger than this. Thank you to the fans for helping #SpiderManBrandNewDay make cinematic history — it’s now the highest-grossing domestic release of ALL TIME at the North American box office.”
The film has been rewriting the record book since the day it opened. It launched July 31 to a $360 million domestic opening weekend, the biggest in history, beating Avengers: Endgame’s previous record of $357 million. It posted the highest-grossing Thursday previews ever and the highest-grossing first week in domestic box office history. It became the fastest film ever to reach every major milestone along the way, six days to hit $400 million, seven days to $500 million, eight days to $550 million, nine days to $600 million, all faster than Endgame managed at each of those same marks. It reached $700 million in 13 days and $800 million in 19 days, and became only the second film in history to cross $900 million domestically, doing so in 36 days. It led the box office for six consecutive weekends, the longest run at number one since Avatar: The Way of Water’s seven-week streak in 2022.
Globally, the numbers are just as staggering. Brand New Day has earned $2.45 billion worldwide, making it the third-highest-grossing film ever made, trailing only Avatar ($2.9 billion) and Avengers: Endgame ($2.7 billion), and sitting ahead of Avatar: The Way of Water ($2.3 billion) and Titanic ($2.2 billion). It reached $1 billion globally in just six days and hit $2 billion after three weekends, the second-fastest film ever to do so behind only Endgame’s 11-day run. It’s also now the highest-grossing film in Sony’s entire history.
The full current top five on the all-time domestic chart, unadjusted for inflation: Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $936.8 million, Star Wars: The Force Awakens at $936.6 million, Avengers: Endgame at $858.4 million, Spider-Man: No Way Home at $814.9 million, and Avatar: The Way of Water at $684.7 million. Whether Brand New Day can become the first film ever to cross $1 billion domestically remains an open question. Deadline’s own box office analysis suggests that’s unlikely without a theatrical re-release, given how much the film’s daily grosses have slowed this deep into its run.
What makes this run remarkable is the context it’s happening in. 2025 was the first year since 2011 that no superhero movie from either Marvel or DC crossed $700 million worldwide, a cold streak spanning more than a decade of genre dominance finally breaking in the wrong direction. The Marvels holds the record for the worst week-to-week box office collapse of any Marvel film ever tracked. DC’s own Superman relaunch under James Gunn is projected to finish its run around $620 million globally, short of that same $700 million mark that used to be a given for a flagship superhero release. Against that backdrop, superhero fatigue has been the dominant narrative in entertainment coverage for two straight years.
Brand New Day is blowing directly through that narrative rather than confirming it. It’s not simply outperforming a weak field, it’s setting records that haven’t been touched since Endgame’s 2019 cultural peak, at a moment when the rest of the genre has been visibly struggling to clear bars it used to clear routinely. It’s worth noting this isn’t happening in a total vacuum either: domestic box office overall in 2026 is running 20.4% ahead of 2025’s total, according to Rentrak, so the year as a whole is seeing a real recovery, not just one film propping up an otherwise dead marketplace. But even inside a genuinely rebounding year, Brand New Day is doing an outsized share of the heavy lifting, and its specific records, the fastest climb to every milestone from $400 million on up, the biggest opening weekend ever, the longest number-one streak in four years, are Spider-Man’s alone.
Directed by Shang-Chi’s Destin Daniel Cretton and starring Holland alongside Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando, and Mark Ruffalo, the film picks up four years after No Way Home’s ending, following a Peter Parker who erased himself from everyone he loves and now fights crime in a city that no longer remembers his name. Whatever the marketing formula behind that premise tapped into, audiences responded to it in numbers the genre hasn’t produced since before the pandemic.
I have zero interest in ever seeing this. I just can't stand Ruffalo or Zendaya anymore.
I mean, maybe the movie was good? Haven't seen it yet.
It does reveal you can still make a big-money movie if you're willing to give straight boys an example of heroism, even if Peter Parker's a bit of a dork (and always has been).