EXCLUSIVE: When it comes to breaking box office records this weekend, look out, because Spider-Man: Brand New Day will do whatever a spider can, starting with tonight as the Sony/Marvel Studios co-production is outstripping the Thursday night previews of the 2021 previous chapter Spider-Man: No Way Home, which did $50M. All of this makes sense given the $80M advance ticket sales figure we heard about for the Tom Holland and Zendaya $225M net production.
No Way Home (which had previews begin at 3PM on its first Thursday) posted the third best previews ever behind 2019’s Avengers: Endgame‘s $60M (6PM start time) and 2015’s Star Wars: Force Awakens‘ $57M Thursday night. Now with more than $50M, Brand New Day stands as the third best U.S./Canada previews ever for a theatrical release, the best previews ever for a Sony movie, and the best previews post Covid. The Destin Daniel Cretton directed Spider-Man sequel began showtimes at 12 noon today, and its preview cash will include Wednesday night’s Prime Video member screening. Some sources were hearing that Brand New Day‘s preview money tonight was exceeding Avengers: Endgame. We’ll know by tom’w morning if it’s higher.
No Way Home‘s previews of $50M only repped 41% of its $121.96M first Friday. That resulted in the second best opening ever at the domestic box office with $260.1M behind Avengers: Endgame‘s all-time high of $357.1M. Force Awakens‘ $57M previews accounted for 48% of its first Friday which was $119.1M. At one point in time Force Awakens 3-day start of $247.96 held the all-time opening record in North America, but it eventually fell to fourth. NRG had a low domestic opening estimate of $195M for Brand New Day, but exhibitors and other tracking services such as Greenlight Analytics believe it’s significantly higher from $260M to even maybe $300M.
Some analysts begin to nerd out arguing that we need to take into account start time for the previews here on Brand New Day, and the time of year before making forecasts. Seriously, it doesn’t matter: this is a ton of money and the most we’ve seen in quite some time, putting away the previous post Covid preview record of $38.5M belonging to Deadpool & Wolverine two Julys ago.
And the other amazing thing about this Spider-Man is that he’s raking in all this cash without the help of Imax screens (which we saw Barbie do three years ago as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer claimed them).
So far, Brand New Day has the best Rotten Tomatoes audience score out of the nine live-action Spider-Man movies with 98%. Critical score is strong at 90% certified fresh, which is just under the 93% of No Way Home.
Tonight’s estimates are according to sources.