Here's the thing. Everyone said the 'No Way Home' multiverse lightning-in-a-bottle was unrepeatable. The nostalgia play, the post-COVID pent-up demand, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield walking back through the door — surely that was a one-time cheat code. Sony just ran the table anyway.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day pulled in $360 million domestically in its opening weekend, according to Monday actuals reported by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. That beats the previous all-time record of $357.1 million set by Avengers: Endgame in April 2019 — a number that, for years, looked like a ceiling nobody would touch. Sony had initially projected a $195 million domestic opening. The final number was nearly double that.
Globally, the film launched to $932 million, making it the second-biggest worldwide debut ever, behind only Endgame's $1.2 billion. The single-day records fell too: $72 million in Thursday previews, the largest preview haul ever, and $169.8 million on opening day (CNBC puts Friday at $169.3 million including presales, with Saturday at $101.5 million and Sunday at $88.7 million).
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and carrying a $225 million production budget, the film picks up after the memory-wipe ending of No Way Home — Peter Parker is fighting crime alone, his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) having no idea he exists. The cast also includes Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal, and Mark Ruffalo.
Audiences showed up and liked what they saw. Brand New Day earned an A CinemaScore and a 98 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics landing at 90. The crowd skewed young and male: 36 percent of ticket buyers were between 18 and 24, and 61 percent were men.
The film achieved all of this locked out of Imax, which had committed its screens to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Imax reversed course Monday and announced it would split screens between the two films going forward. Rival premium formats — Dolby Cinema, ScreenX, and 4DX — each reported record-breaking sales over the weekend.
'Brand New Day' is now on pace to become the fourth billion-dollar film of 2026, joining Toy Story 5, Michael, and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Holland's run as Peter Parker has grown at every step: Homecoming opened to $117 million domestically, Far From Home to $92 million, No Way Home to $260 million, and now this.
Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman put it plainly: 'Wow! 360 million thank-yous to all the filmmakers, actors, producers, and to my colleagues at Sony.' He also noted, with appropriate humility, that 'records are made to be broken.'
The broader domestic frame for the weekend hit an estimated $430 million, the biggest single weekend ever at the North American box office, per The Hollywood Reporter — up from the previous record of $402.1 million set during Endgame's opening. Year-to-date domestic box office is now up 15.2 percent over 2025 at this point in the calendar.
Read the changelog: the franchise nobody thought could keep scaling just scaled again. Free markets have a way of rewarding product that actually delivers. Audiences voted with their wallets to the tune of $360 million in 72 hours — no mandate, no subsidy, no algorithm required. Whatever Marvel and Sony are shipping right now, the benchmarks say it works.
