At some point, a blockbuster stops being measured against the other movies released in the same year. Then it starts being measured against history. Spider-Man: Brand New Day reached that point last week. Now we’re talking about whether or not it comes the biggest movie ever at the box office.
Following the biggest domestic opening weekend ever and one of the largest worldwide launches in motion-picture history, Sony and Marvel’s latest Spider-Man film is in the middle of its third weekend with projections that make an extraordinary question increasingly reasonable. The Hollywood trades are reporting a $65M third weekend, which might be a record-breaker all on its own. It’s familiar territory for Tom Holland, who seems to be breaking record-after-record. In fact, he may now be the top-grossing summer box office actor in history… already.
Could Spider-Man: Brand New Day actually become the highest-grossing movie ever?
The answer depends enormously on which record we’re talking about. Domestically, the answer may now be more than “maybe”… it may just be very likely. Worldwide, the answer is considerably more complicated.
Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Brand New Day – Sony, YouTube
As of Saturday morning, August 15, Brand New Day was tracking toward approximately $65 million domestically in its third weekend, according to Deadline, following a Friday of nearly $19 million. That’s down roughly 55% from its enormous second weekend, but don’t let the percentage drop obscure the important number:
$65 million in weekend three is gigantic.
For comparison, Avengers: Endgame earned approximately $63.3 million during its third weekend in 2019.
In other words, three weekends into its run, Spider-Man is still generating roughly the same weekend business as one of the most successful movies ever made. And Brand New Day started from an even higher domestic position.
The movie opened with approximately $360.1 million domestically, edging past Avengers: Endgame’s $357.1 million launch for the biggest domestic opening weekend on record. Then came a second weekend of roughly $144.5 million, bringing the movie to approximately $655 million after just ten days. By Thursday, August 13, the domestic total had climbed to approximately $715.9 million.
Add a roughly $65 million third weekend and Spider-Man should finish Sunday somewhere in the neighborhood of: $800 million domestically.
After just 17 days. That signals it’s likely a billion dollar domestic winner. Given its current performance in which more of the box office numbers are coming in from international sources than domestic, Spider-Man is headed for north of $2.5 billion at the global box office. It’s now just a question of how far it can go.
That’s where this starts getting extremely interesting.
Tom Holland as Spider-Man in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Marvel Studios
The domestic record that matters belongs to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.The 2015 blockbuster ultimately accumulated: $936,662,225 domestically.
That record has survived for more than a decade. Even Avengers: Endgame — despite its unprecedented opening — ultimately stalled at roughly $858 million domestically. But Brand New Day is running substantially ahead of Endgame. After three weeks, Endgame stood at approximately $741 million domestically. Spider-Man appears likely to be around $800 million after its third weekend. That’s roughly a $40-60 million advantage (depending on how Saturday and Sunday shake out).
More importantly, Spider-Man is even running ahead of The Force Awakens at approximately the same point.
The Force Awakens finished its third weekend — its 17th day in domestic release — at approximately: $742.2 million. If Brand New Day lands around $780 million Sunday, it would therefore be approximately: $38 million ahead of The Force Awakens after 17 days.
That’s a remarkable position.
The Hand in Spider-Man: Brand New Day – Sony, YouTube
However, the race for the top movie of all-time worldwide is a much steeper climb. Here’s where the conversation changes.
The worldwide record doesn’t belong to Star Wars. It belongs to James Cameron.
The original Avatar has accumulated approximately: $2.924 billion worldwide.
That includes theatrical rereleases, most notably the Chinese rerelease that allowed Avatar to reclaim the worldwide title after Avengers: Endgame briefly surpassed it.
The current all-time leaderboard begins roughly like this:
- Avatar — $2.924 billion
- Avengers: Endgame — roughly $2.8 billion
- Avatar: The Way of Water — roughly $2.32-$2.33 billion
- Titanic — roughly $2.22 billion
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens — roughly $2.06 billion
The precise figures vary slightly among box-office databases because of rereleases and historical currency reporting, but Avatar’s roughly $2.92 billion is the target. Spider-Man has already raced through a large part of that list. After only ten days, Brand New Day was already sitting at approximately $1.67 billion worldwide.
That’s incredible.
Tom Holland as Spider-Man and Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk in Spider-Man: Brand New Day – Sony, Marvel Studios
It made Spider-Man the biggest film of 2026 after barely more than a week.
It also meant that Brand New Day was already approaching the lifetime worldwide gross of movies such as Inside Out 2, Jurassic World and The Lion King while still in the earliest portion of its theatrical run.
But Avatar exists in another universe. For Spider-Man to win, it still needs to leg out another 33% after this weekend worldwide. It needs to find another billion before it ends. With no real competition on the runway, it’s possible. But Spider-Man will need to start dropping very small percentages and keep performing phenomenally through September. The announcement of the new X-Men cast at D23 might help. Maybe fans will want another look at Sadie Sink as Jean Grey. An announcement of Tom Holland in Doomsday would also help.
Spider-Man is headed for a top three finish of all-time. Whether it’s third, second or the biggest ever is now up for grabs.
