UPDATE: North America just answered. Brand New Day posted an all-time record opening day between $167 million and $173 million domestic, blowing past Endgame‘s $157.4 million, with the weekend now estimated north of $330 million. The full domestic breakdown is here.
China just blew up every forecast on the board.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened in China on Wednesday, two days ahead of North America, and delivered the biggest opening day for a Hollywood superhero movie in the market in seven years.
The Day One Numbers
Per THR, the movie had already earned $16.5 million by midday, with Chinese ticketing giant Maoyan projecting a $37.4 million first-day total.
That puts it level with the $36 million day one of 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, the last superhero movie to open big there, and roughly quadruples the best post-Covid superhero opening day, the $9.4 million of Venom: The Last Dance.
Reports also peg it as the widest comic book movie release China has seen since the pandemic, and box office account Global Box Office notes it’s the biggest opening day for any comic book movie there since Avengers: Endgame.
The Forecasts Just Got Torched
Here’s the part that matters for the global picture. Deadline’s box office preview projected $45 million out of China for the entire weekend.
Day one nearly hit that number by itself.
Global Box Office now has China tracking at $130 million to $150 million by Sunday, which it calls “the best opening for ANY Hollywood movie in China this decade,” ahead of the Avatar films.
The full-run forecasts go further. Maoyan pegs the movie’s ultimate China total at $255 million, with rival tracker Dengta above $265 million. Either number would stand as Hollywood’s biggest China gross since Endgame in 2019, surpassing Avatar: The Way of Water at $246 million.
And it means the $465 million global opening projection, Sony’s second-biggest ever on paper, suddenly looks conservative. The rival studios whispering $250 million domestic may have been onto something.
Seven Years Of Pent-Up Demand
The history here explains the explosion.
Spider-Man: No Way Home never played China, reportedly over its Statue of Liberty third act, and still did $1.92 billion worldwide. Chinese audiences have been waiting since Far From Home in 2019, the last superhero movie to clear $100 million there with its $199 million run.
In between came Marvel’s regulatory freeze from mid-2019 into early 2023, and the recovery era’s high-water marks were Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 at $87 million and Venom: The Last Dance at $94 million for their entire runs.
Brand New Day may pass both of those lifetime totals by Sunday night.
The demand was visible before a single showtime: presales finished at $18.6 million, the best for any imported film in the past three summers.
The Fatigue Rebuttal Goes Global
China was the market Hollywood held up as proof the superhero era was over. Local films took over, Marvel titles got frozen out, and the recovery numbers stayed soft.
Turns out the audience there was doing the same thing the audience everywhere else was doing: waiting for a movie worth showing up for.
The audience never left. It got selective. Even in Mandarin.
Stateside, the wave starts tonight with the Prime early screenings, previews follow Thursday, and per Variety, some major chains are scheduling showtimes every 15 minutes from dusk to dawn this weekend.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31. For everything on the movie, check out our complete Brand New Day guide.
