Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal have two billion dollar films in theatres at the same time. Photo credit: Sony.
Today’s DSR Box Office Report will be a bit shortened as I pull double duty and write this during the MLB Trade Deadline, all of which can be followed here, but the primary story this week is the reason we waited until Monday, and it was to see if the actuals would overperform the estimates for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, something I had been confident would happen. The actuals scored $5M more than anticipated, and it is enough to push them ahead of Avengers: Endgame for the highest opening in history.
Spider-Man obviously opened at #1, which gives us quite a bit to discuss. Its global opening threatned $1B and will easily be the quickest of the year to the mark, the fourth film overall to reach it for 2026 likely by Monday. This is a great litmus test for box office comprehension, however. The $900M+ global opening is aided by the fact that Spider-Man opened in every market, which is why pundits generally cite domestic opening, as not all global openings are created equal. This week’s #2 film, for example, was The Odyssey. We’ll dive more on that performance later, but the Odyssey still has yet to open in China, Japan, or Korea, so while it has made $900M globally, it still has yet to hit some of the biggest global markets. This isn’t to suggest that it would have opened as big as Spider-Man, no. It wouldn’t have been close. It’s just a good example of something that often confounds some of our readers as to why we aggregate certain numbers and not others for openings.
The film opened to records in France, India, Brazil, and a number of major markets. But the big story is the incredible opening in the States amidst the concept of ‘superhero fatique,’ something that we’ve seen in recent years from underperformance from other recent Marvel films, namely some really solid films in Thunderbolts* and Fantastic 4: The First Steps. Marvel needed this win ahead of Avengers: Doomsday, but it’s hard to imagine this is the end of the superhero fatigue stigma as much as Spider-Man, much like the Avengers as a group, is an exception to the rule. There’s a universality in the characteristics of Spider-Man as a naive, everyday neighborly teenager that has to deal with universal experiences such as grief. There’s a real humanity behind Spider-Man that other heroes don’t necessarily bring to the table, and that’s really made Spider-Man teflon when it comes to the box office. Everybody loves Spider-Man even if they don’t enjoy the comic book film.
It’s also easy to imagine that the success of No Way Home had a lot to do with this. When people have a great time at the movie theatres, which No Way Home delivered with as an event, they want to come back, and a five-year gap between films not only had them wanting back, but had audiences missing our friendly neighborhood hero as well. One final factor I think contributed: it’s very grounded. The film introduces one of their tentpole characters going forward, and ties in the popularity of Stranger Things to boot, but with an escape from the multiverse, Spider-Man is back to being a franchise that requires very little homework to keep up with the franchise, and really leans into the charm of Spider-Man: Homecoming while still using the events of the following movies to have a more mature message in the process. That feels like a winning combination. With IMAX being introduced this week, the sky’s the limit for its legs. We anticipate a larger than standard drop, but when a film opens so large, that’s not an alarming sign as much as it is basic arithmetic while measuring the market place.
One movie that is seeing stellar drops still does star America’s favorite couple of Tom Holland and Zendaya as The Odyssey still scored over $50M this weekend. To put this into perspective, only nine movies have ever opened above $200M. Of those $200M openers, only one had another movie that weekend make at least $20M, and the Odyssey made over $50M against a $300M opener in its third weekend. The Odyssey has sailed well past $900M before it even opened in what’s expected to be its three largest international markets. A billion is guaranteed, but at this point, anything less than becoming the highest grossing R-rated film of all-time, topping the $1.3B by Deadpool and Wolverine would feel like a disappointed with the way this film has been legging out.
The film powered IMAX to its highest grossing month in history, almost entirely on Nolan’s name. The conversation about Nolan himself being the IP should have happened after Nolan led an R-rated, half-B&W, half-color legal drama biopic about a physicist to nearly $1B at the box office, but will happen now that he’ll have the highest grossing R-rated movie of all-time without an established franchise to do so. It’s going to be yet another insanely profitable blockbuster that wins a bunch of Academy Awards. Universal’s investment on Nolan has shown remarkable dividends. Universal also became the first studio to pass $4B as a studio this year, backed not only by the Odyssey, but Michael and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, both of which crossed the $1B plateau.
The big three this week had been rounded out by Toy Story 5, and it’s a film we’ve written extensively about in other box office reports. Like recent weeks, especially today with how much I’m covering elsewhere, we’ll cover very few of the remaining films in depth. However, the combination of the three led to a big record: highest grossing weekend in box office history. In a post-COVID climate where theatres then immediately dealt with their complimentary industry suffering a work stoppage, this is the time they’ve been waiting for. Between this three films, as well as breakout hits such as Project Hail Mary, Obsession, and Backrooms, it’s been a year for the movies. People are clamoring for the big screen again, and it looks like the box office has finally bounced back. In coming weeks, we’ll monitor the trend and perhaps analyze more as to why.
The live-action Moana finally recouped its budget, but still ~$360M in the red when factoring in marketing costs and theatrical split, a $15M global weekend shows it’s running out of steam and will offset any profits Disney made from Toy Story 5. We explored in detail why the live-action of such a beloved property bombed just under a month ago, which can be read here. The other major story we feel is worth covering is Her Private Hell, which didn’t have an ordinary wide release to begin with, losing 90% of its theatres. The latest film from Drive filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn will make less than $1M at the box office.
Rounding out the top ten this week: Minions & Monsters, Hadestown (pro-shot), The Invite, I Want Your Sex, Evil Dead: Burn, Young Washington. The main story here is Olivia Wilde dominating the sex-comedy niche this week, and The Invite, a film she took less money for a theatrical release instead of direct-to-Netflix, has officially turned a profit for A24.
There is very little coming out this week, just seemingly Ice Cream Man and Super Troopers 3. These are clear counterprogramming hopefuls, but Super Troopers isn’t going to light the world on fire. The second one made only $32M globally and there’s been a near-decade gap between films, But it’s a low-budget so it should still perform well enough. Understandably, studios don’t want to put their big potential hits up against the second weekend of Spider-Man.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.