Spider-Man Brand New Day's $1.67 Billion Run Confirms Avengers Doomsday Will Cross $2 Billion

Spider-Man Brand New Day's box office performance is a way bigger deal than most people realize. Spider-Man movies have always done well, especially the MCU entries, with the last two making over a billion dollars each and No Way Home nearly clearing two billion in the middle of a pandemic. So I knew Brand New Day would do well. But we are past well. We are in uncharted territory, and after only two weekends in theaters it has already made approximately 1.67 billion dollars worldwide. This film is on track to join the top 10 movies of all time.

Spider-Man Brand New Day beat Avengers Endgame's opening weekend record

Brand New Day opened domestically to roughly 360 million dollars, beating Avengers Endgame's 357 million dollar opening weekend and making it the biggest domestic opening weekend in movie history. Think about what that means. Endgame had more than 10 years of build-up, came directly off Avengers Infinity War, and arrived when the Marvel Studios brand was at its highest level ever. Brand New Day just beat it.

Films like Endgame make the overwhelming bulk of their money in that opening weekend. Spider-Man films behave that way too, but not to the same extent, because they also appeal to family audiences who often wait for the second or third weekend instead of fighting opening night crowds. Brand New Day managed to do both: it posted that Endgame-beating opening while also holding strong afterward.

The second weekend numbers are just as historic

Brand New Day's second weekend brought in nearly 145 million dollars domestically, making it the third biggest second weekend in box office history. I think this is a genuinely great movie on every level. It is a crowd-pleaser like No Way Home, but it is actually really, really good and will hold up for a long time. Unlike No Way Home and Deadpool and Wolverine, it does not lean on nostalgia baiting. It is a well-made, perfectly executed movie that looks amazing and flows beautifully.

Based on this trajectory, Brand New Day looks like it could finish its theatrical run at 2.5 to 2.7 billion dollars, just shy of Endgame. I have had more faith than most in Marvel recently and in general audiences' hunger to go to the movies, which usually leads me to make box office predictions higher than others in this space. Even I am dumbfounded by these numbers.

This proves the fatigue people blamed on superheroes was really just fatigue for meh movies

There was a recent period where conventional wisdom said the MCU had lost cultural power, and it is not difficult to understand why people felt that way, because to an extent it is true. A lot of recent superhero movies have underperformed. I have heard people attribute this to franchise fatigue, multiverse fatigue, superhero fatigue, or Marvel fatigue. But all of that is really just a symptom of the actual fatigue causing it, which is meh movie fatigue. That fatigue gets mislabeled as fatigue for the genre itself when it is really just fatigue for mediocre movies. Spider-Man is proof that when you put out a movie that is genuinely stellar, people will come out to see it.

To play devil's advocate, I thought Thunderbolts was stellar, and many others did too, but it did not make big money at the box office. I think that is a somewhat different situation, though. One is Spider-Man, and the other is a movie built around derivative D-list comic book characters and sidekicks, many introduced in TV shows, which gave it an uphill battle from the start.

The Odyssey shows this is bigger than just Spider-Man

I think Brand New Day proves people still care and are still willing to leave their houses and spend money when a movie feels like an event worth seeing in a theater rather than waiting to watch at home. That is something we have also seen this summer with another big movie starring Tom Holland, The Odyssey, which in its own way is a comic book movie. The story is older than most and has inspired the very motifs we expect in modern storytelling epics. Like Brand New Day, The Odyssey has broken serious records and crossed a billion dollars because it plays as an event, an experience meant for the big screen.

Audiences have not stopped going to the movies, they have become more selective

What does all this mean for Marvel, for Doomsday, and for movies in general? It reminds us that audiences have not stopped going to the movies. They have simply become more selective about what they are willing to go see, especially now that there are more movies and TV shows being made than at any point in history, all competing with social media content as well. It takes something special to get the kind of numbers we are seeing with films like Brand New Day and Odyssey.

I think the lesson Marvel and Sony will take from this is that quality over quantity is the best path, because in the long run, and even in the short term, it makes the most money. Brand New Day's performance shows Marvel is in a great position right now, and that the movie theater industry is in a great position too, one many thought it would never reach again. If Brand New Day had finished its run at 1.5 billion dollars worldwide, I would already be ecstatic, because that would be a good sign for Marvel, Doomsday, and movies in general. Instead it is on track to do a billion more than that.

Why I said back in November that Avengers Doomsday would cross $2 billion

I said back in November of last year that Avengers Doomsday would without a doubt make over two billion dollars, and that a lot would have to go wrong for it to come in under that mark. My reasoning was simple: in the entire history of the Avengers franchise, only one Avengers movie has made less than the one before it, and that was Avengers Age of Ultron. Endgame made more than Infinity War, Infinity War made more than Ultron, and Ultron made only 8 percent less than the first Avengers movie.

If Avengers Doomsday came out and made anything less than two billion dollars, that would mean a 28 percent drop from Endgame, its predecessor. I did not see a scenario where the sequel to Endgame dropped 28 percent, even though a lot of people told me I was crazy, that Marvel had lost its step and the fandom just is not the same anymore. I get that some of that criticism was fair. I was told Doomsday would be lucky to do 1.7 or 1.8 billion, and to that I have always said, "hogwash, respectfully."

Now the question is how close Doomsday gets to $3 billion, and what that means for Secret Wars

After a strong Doomsday trailer and this Brand New Day performance, the question is no longer whether Doomsday can near two billion dollars. The question everyone is now asking is how close it can get to three billion. I do not think Doomsday crosses or reaches three billion. I think it does 2.7 to 2.9 billion, which is still very impressive and very close to that mark.

But if Doomsday is beloved and comes in around 2.7 to 2.8 billion, I think Avengers Secret Wars, which will feature the return of Brand New Day stars including Tom Holland's Spider-Man, Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, the Hulk, and probably Jon Bernthal's Punisher, could become the first 3 billion dollar movie. I care about these numbers not because I want giant corporations and their shareholders to make money for its own sake, but because I love movies, especially superhero movies, and for us to keep getting them at this level on the big screen, they need to make a lot of money. That is why Brand New Day's numbers spell good news not just for Doomsday and Secret Wars, but for the whole industry.

Do you think this means Doomsday could knock on that 3 billion dollar door, and could Secret Wars actually get there?