Specifically, Daniel Destin Cretton’s new Spidey film made $72 million in early showings, breaking the previous $60 million record Endgame set back in 2019. (Although, to be fair, Brand New Day shoved some Wednesday screenings into the mix to goose that number, while Endgame opened pretty much everywhere on a Thursday.) And while that doesn’t mean this latest web-slinging adventure is likely to actually beat the planet’s best-performing movie ever in the ultimate box office tallies—the film is expected to make north of $200 million at the domestic box office this weekend, a fair margin less than Endgame‘s $357 million opening back in 2019—it does put Brand New Day on track to beat 99.996 percent of all Hollywood films ever produced. Which is still pretty good!
None of this is entirely surprising: Anticipation has been running high for the film ever since Holland gave in a few years back and admitted he’d be making a fourth Spider-focused movie, a follow-up to current “8th most successful movie of all time” Spider-Man: No Way Home. Brand New Day not only brings back one of the MCU’s most popular characters after an absence of five years, but does so in the midst of what’s been a fairly fallow period for the studio. (One that’s it been very clearly trying to correct of late by going back to a lot of previously tapped wells, including reviving Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine for last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, and launching a full-bore nostalgia assault with this December’s Avengers: Doomsday.) In this regard, at least, the move seems to be paying off: The film is getting strong reviews to go alongside its early box office wins, giving Disney, Sony, and Marvel one of those increasingly rare superhero movie victories they’ve been pining for lately.
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