There’s certainly a case to be made now, after Spider-Man: Brand New Day captured a genuinely mind-boggling $360 million in its domestic debut, quietly supplanting Avengers: Endgame’s long-standing 2019 opening weekend record of $357 million (not adjusted for inflation). What Sony initially called a $355 million weekend, itself already the second-largest domestic debut of all time, actually landed higher once the final numbers came in. A Sunday estimate of $84.2 million turned into an actual $88 million-plus once the dust settled, tipping the film’s total over $359 million and, in the process, over Endgame’s once-untouchable record entirely.
Nobody, reasonably, expected to see numbers like this again. Not post-Covid, not in a world where streaming was supposed to have permanently reshaped how people watch things. It’s a genuine triumph for Tom Rothman’s Motion Picture Division at Sony, a studio boss who has spent years as one of the industry’s loudest remaining champions of actual moviegoing, committed enough to the bit that he had Sony’s parent company take custody of the Covid-dormant Cinerama Dome, now set for a grand reopening in 2028.
The breakdown underneath the topline number tells its own story. Premium large format screens accounted for 24% of the weekend, with 3D contributing another 17% on top of that, hardly the numbers of an audience content to wait for a smaller screen at home. Per PostTrak, 58% of those who turned out said they came because it’s part of a franchise they love, 47% said it simply looked fun and entertaining, 41% cited the cast as a whole, 39% went specifically for Holland, and 29% for Zendaya. However you slice the reasoning, the conclusion sits in the same place: people wanted to be there, in a seat, this particular weekend, and showed up in numbers nobody was quite ready for.
The records Brand New Day broke (all-time #1 rankings):
- Top Weekend Theater Averages — All Weekends, Wide
- Top Opening Weekends By Month — July
- Top Single Day Grosses By Day of the Week — Friday
- Top Single Day Grosses (outright, all-time)
- Top Opening Weekends By Season — Summer
- Opening Days (highest-grossing opening day of all time)
- Fastest to $100 Million
- Fastest to $150 Million
- Fastest to $200 Million
- Fastest to $250 Million
- Top Opening Theater Averages — Wide Opening Weekends
- Top Opening Grosses by Days in Release — 2-Days
Where it landed at #2, just behind Endgame:
- Fastest to $300 Million
- Fastest to $350 Million
- Top Single Day Non-Opening Grosses — Saturday
- Top Single Day Non-Opening Grosses — Sunday