In a real case of 'fork found in kitchen', a novel Spider-Man movie has just hit cinemas and is going gangbusters at the box office. But while a wil
In a real case of ‘fork found in kitchen’, a novel Spider-Man movie has just hit cinemas and is going gangbusters at the box office. But while a wildly successful Spidey outing ain’t nothing novel (the last one, Spider-Man: No Way Home, took an eye-watering $582.7 million worldwide in its opening weekend back in 2021), Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day just blew any and all first frame expectations out of the water. swinging its way to a staggering $927 million global debut — second only to Avengers: Endgame‘s $1.2 billion back in pre-COVID 2019.
Tom Holland’s fourth solo Spider-Man movie, and his first in half a decade, was always going to be a massive deal — not least because we weren’t always sure he’d be donning the mask again after No Way Home and, well, now he is (and, it seems, very happily so!) But arriving scorching on the heels of a massive SDCC for Marvel Studios, amid a resurgence in MCU interest as Avengers: Doomsday nears, and with the mystery of who Stranger Things star Sadie Sink is playing in the film driving fans to see it before spoilers flood the net, Brand New Day has been supercharged to success, taking $355 million at the domestic box office alone in its first days — which, for those crunching the numbers, is just $2 million shy of Endgame‘s stateside opening. At its current rate, box office aggregators and trackers are already predicting the hugely consequential MCU movie will almost inevitably join the rarified $2 billion box-office club, of which only two other MCU films — Infinity War and Endgame — are currently members.
And in what has proven to be the best weekend at the box office in Hollywood’s history, Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t the only Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal starring hero’s journey blockbuster doing mega numbers, either. In its third weekend, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey sailed past the $911 million mark at the box office, with the British auteur’s mythic epic set to reach the billion-dollar milestone over the next week and — unless buffeted by Poseidon or struck down by Zeus himself — wind up the highest-grossing movie of his entire career (yes, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises included.)
All of which is to say that as discourse continues to rage on about superhero fatigue, the future of bricks-and-mortar cinema, and other such often doom-and-gloom topics, there’s a thwipping great superhero movie and an old-school epic packing out cinemas with no signs of slowing that may just be enough to keep the movie-based morbs at bay. And all this before Dunesday arrives in December… sheesh!
