Spider-Man: Brand New Day Officially Dethrones Star Wars to Set an Unbeatable Box Office Record — Explained

Before its release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s success was a rare guarantee for Hollywood. Not only was it the first movie starring the webslinging hero in five years, but it was the last MCU movie before Avengers: Doomsday, plus it stars the Hollywood power couple of Tom Holland and Zendaya. Even with all those factors front and center, no one, not even Sony Pictures, could have predicted that the movie would become a complete box office juggernaut and set box office records on an almost daily basis for the first few weeks. Now, six weeks after its release, Spider-Man: Brand New Day has claimed a stunning crown.

Sony Pictures has confirmed that the official total for Spider-Man: Brand New Day at the domestic box office now stands at $936.773 million, meaning it has caught up to and surpassed 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The J.J. Abrams movie from Disney and Lucasfilm set the record a decade ago after beating out Avatar, and successfully fending off challengers from Avengers: Endgame and even Spider-Man: No Way Home. Now, though, there’s a new king on the charts, and Tom Holland’s sequel could make this record unachievable for years.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Becomes Highest-Grossing Domestic Movie of All Time

It’s impressive enough on its face that Spider-Man: Brand New Day was able to accomplish this level of success and break a record that has stood for over a decade, but what’s really impressive about it is how quickly it managed to do it. Though Star Wars: The Force Awakens was able to eclipse Avatar in a matter of 25 days, it wouldn’t reach its final domestic total until after 165 days of being in theaters. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, on the other hand, has managed to outgross that entire five-and-a-half-month run from Episode VII in just 47 days.

Though it seems unlikely that Spider-Man: Brand New Day will stay in theaters for another 120 days, since windows have shrunk considerably in the post-COVID era, the fact that the film will continue to play after shattering the record means that the goalpost is about to move in a tremendous direction.

Thanks to kids being back in school, the weekday totals for Spider-Man: Brand New Day are starting to slip, but the film is continuing to play well on the weekends, falling to the #2 position for the first time this past week after it was defeated by Practical Magic 2. That said, the movie still made an extra $8.4 million this past weekend. Assuming similar holds happen over the next few weekends, we’re looking at Spider-Man: Brand New Day potentially adding another $10 million, or more, to its final domestic haul.

Before Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiered, it appeared like Star Wars: The Force Awakens would stay at the top of the domestic box office forever, especially when even Avengers: Endgame couldn’t capture the crown. Adding to the changes that the box office has had in the time since the pandemic in 2020, both the shrinking of windows and the change in audience behavior made it seem even more likely.

All that in mind, it’s incredible to see a movie actually manage to break the record, and even more impressive is that Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t done yet. The next movie to try and take the record has its work cut out for it.