‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Scores Historic $355M Opening at Box Office

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swung to the second-best domestic debut in box office history.

The superhero saga rang up a projected $355 million in ticket sales from 4,487 locations across the U.S. and Canada, box office tracking company Rentrak reported Sunday. That averaged out to a stunning $79,117 per theater.

With overseas ticket sales added in, the film earned a total $927 million worldwide.

Destin Daniel Cretton directed the Sony-Columbia Pictures/Marvel Studios film from a script written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers.

Based on the Marvel comic books by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, this is the latest Spider-Man with Tom Holland in the title role, which was previously played by Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.

The cast for the new film includes Holland’s real-life wife Zendaya as MJ, alongside Jon Bernthal, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando, Mark Ruffalo, Marisa Tomei, Florence Pugh, and Liza Colon-Zayas.

The movie came within touching distance of the best domestic opening of all time, held by Avengers: Endgame, which debuted with $357.1 million in 2019, according to Box Office Mojo.

Also Read: Mahershala Ali Says He’s Done With Marvel’s ‘Blade’ Reboot

Critics gave Spider-Man: Brand New Day high marks. The film currently has a 90 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 320 reviews.

“With the possible exception of [director] Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 2, it’s the wall-crawler’s best film to date,” wrote Nick Schager of The Daily Beast.

“Director Destin Daniel Cretton knows how to balance action and emotion, and there’s genuine feelings of loss and sadness in the interactions between Peter, MJ and Ned,” added Adam Graham of the Detroit News.

“A solid superhero adventure but forgets to dive deeper into what’s happening to the man behind the mask,” wrote Kit Stone of Hue Watched It.

Elsewhere this weekend, The Odyssey took second place with $51 million in its third weekend. The Christopher Nolan action epic stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of Ithaca and central character in Homer’s classic poem The Odyssey. The film has now grossed $911.3 million worldwide.

Toy Story 5 came in third this weekend with $6.3 million, Rentrak reported.

Minions & Monsters was fourth with $5.8 million in its fifth week, and Moana rounded out the top five with $5.3 million.

This weekend marked the highest domestic box office total in history, thanks to Spider-Man and The Odyssey.

Below is a chart from Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak, showing which weekends have scored the best box office hauls over the years.