Spider-Man: Brand New Day sets $72 million preview box office record

Spider-Man: Brand New Day pulled in $72 million in Thursday previews across North America, setting a new box office record and topping Avengers: Endgame’s $60 million mark. The haul put Sony and Marvel’s latest Spider-Man release at the center of a bigger question for Hollywood: after years of volatility, is theatrical demand rebuilding around a handful of franchise giants, or is this another one-off surge?

The comparison with Endgame is especially stark because Marvel’s 2019 juggernaut did more than own the preview record. Its $60 million in previews helped launch a $357.1 million domestic opening weekend, still the biggest in North American history. Brand New Day now enters the same conversation with a launchpad that studios have spent years trying to recreate, and Boxoffice Pro had already flagged the film as a likely contender for the biggest opening of 2026 and, in a later weekend preview, possibly the second-biggest opening weekend ever.

Tom Holland and Zendaya lead the film, which is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. That combination of star power and brand familiarity has helped make Spider-Man one of the few comic-book properties with repeated box office outliers rather than a single peak. Spider-Man: No Way Home opened to $253 million domestically and $587.2 million globally from 61 markets, while Spider-Man: Homecoming opened to $117.0 million domestically, a strong launch that was once Sony’s biggest Spider-Man opening in a decade.

The marketing machine behind Brand New Day was just as oversized as the box-office numbers. Deadline put the film’s promo partner campaign at $309 million, calling it a Hollywood record. That level of spending, paired with a character who has remained one of the most reliable draws in multiplexes, suggests the preview total was built on more than curiosity alone. It also shows how heavily the modern box office now leans on event branding, franchise loyalty and massive promotional reach to concentrate turnout into a narrow window.

For theaters, the 72 million dollar preview haul is more than a headline. It is a stress test for whether the biggest movies can still pull enough audience volume fast enough to revive the kind of opening weekends that once defined the business.