Spider-Man: Brand New Day sold $927m (£687m) of tickets worldwide on its opening weekend, the second-biggest global debut in cinema history.
Only Avengers: Endgame has done better, taking more than $1.2bn across its opening weekend in 2019.
The new film, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, did set one outright record. Its $360m (£268m) haul in the US and Canada is the largest opening weekend those markets have ever produced.
Outside the US, Sony Pictures reported $572m from more than 73,000 screens, including $121m from China and $49m from UK cinemas over the weekend.
Three days was enough to clear the production budget, estimated at $225m (£167m).
Timely for Marvel
The scale of the opening matters for Marvel Studios, which has watched several recent releases underperform. Brand New Day is its last cinema release before Avengers: Doomsday arrives in December, the film meant to tie together multiple story arcs left hanging since Endgame.
Marvel president Kevin Feige called the opening truly phenomenal and thanked audiences for turning out and seeing the film the way it was intended to be seen.
Since Endgame, the studio has struggled to pull the broad audiences it once took for granted. The Marvels and Thunderbolts both recovered their production costs, but ranked among Marvel’s lowest-grossing releases.
Spider-Man has been the reliable exception. No Way Home took close to $2bn.
What the film does
Brand New Day picks up a few years after No Way Home, with Peter Parker still fighting crime in a world that no longer remembers who is behind the mask. Reviews have been mostly positive, with some rating it Holland’s strongest performance in the role.
Cinemas are having a better year
Attendance has been soft since the pandemic pushed audiences towards Netflix and other streaming services. This year has gone differently. North American box office takings are on course to pass $10bn for the first time since 2019.
Toy Story 5, Michael and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie have each cleared $1bn. Brand New Day and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, both July releases, are tracking towards the same mark.
There have been smaller surprises too. Indie horror films Obsession and Backrooms each took more than $390m on modest budgets.
