It was clear that Spider-Man: Brand New Day was going to be a Marvel hit, but I don’t think anyone expected it to be one in such a big way, almost making The Odyssey look like just another little movie and not like the smash hit it has also been. In fact, in less than a week it has grossed a staggering $1.052 billion worldwide, which makes it the highest-grossing film of the year and also a clear candidate to join the $2 billion club sooner rather than later.
Climbing to the top!
So far, that honor belongs to only 7 films: Avengers: Infinity War, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ne Zha 2, Titanic, Avatar: The Way of Water, Avengers: Endgame and, of course, Avatar. And the question now isn’t whether Brand New Day will get there, but when it will and how far it can go. Some say it could be the first film in history to reach $3 billion (it has no competition in summer, after all) but we’ll have to wait to find out.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that superhero cinema has been resurrected or that the fatigue is over: Spider-Man is doing its own thing entirely, even if the film bothers to throw in characters from other movies here and there trying to draw attention. What’s clear is that this sequel, which on paper didn’t seem to offer anything new and had no business being this epic, is going to exceed all expectations and give Marvel free rein to do whatever it wants for another five years, at least.
It’s also true that traditionally superhero films make a lot of money on their opening weekend and then fall off, but in this case nobody knows what’s going to happen, and there’s even a chance that it will even surpass Avengers: Doomsday. Because few things do people like more than that masked menace.
