Spider-Man: Brand New Day has done something no Marvel movie, no Avengers film, and no pandemic-era blockbuster could manage in over a decade: it has knocked Star Wars: The Force Awakens off the top of North America's all-time box office chart. Tom Holland's Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now the No. 1 movie of all time at the domestic box office, having beaten the long-standing record held by Star Wars: The Force Awakens. For an industry that spent the 2020s wondering whether theatrical blockbusters could ever again produce numbers like this, the milestone is being read as more than a superhero win it's being read as a referendum on whether moviegoing itself is back.
What Happened: The Record, By the Numbers
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has overtaken 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the highest-grossing movie of all time at the North American box office. The film crossed the threshold on Tuesday, September 16, with a single-day gross of $915,084, pushing its cumulative domestic total to $936,773,134 narrowly ahead of the previous benchmark.
What makes this especially remarkable is the speed. The Force Awakens needed 165 days and a full holiday-season run to reach its final total, while Brand New Day got there in just 47 days. The Force Awakens had held the domestic crown for more than a decade, with $936 million, before officially ceding it to Tom Holland's latest Spider-Man film.
Domestic box office record — old vs. new
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Why This Record Was Considered Nearly Untouchable
For years, industry watchers treated The Force Awakens' domestic total as a number that belonged to a different era of moviegoing. The record survived Avengers: Endgame's cultural-event run in 2019 and Spider-Man: No Way Home's pandemic-defying surge in 2021, both of which came close enough to worry Lucasfilm. Before Brand New Day premiered, it appeared the Force Awakens would hold the top spot indefinitely, especially since even Endgame couldn't capture the crown, and post-pandemic shifts in theatrical windows and audience habits made the record look even safer.
That context matters for readers trying to understand why this is news and not just another box office headline. A record held for more than a decade has now fallen, and just months ago almost no one expected it. This is the "why it matters" layer most coverage skips: it isn't just that one film out-earned another it's that a number widely assumed to be permanent, in a shrinking theatrical marketplace, turned out not to be.
The Bigger Picture: A Genuinely Historic Global Run
The domestic record is only part of the story. The film's $360 million opening weekend beat Avengers: Endgame's previous domestic-opening record, and its global numbers have been just as extraordinary.
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The film reached $2.022 billion worldwide, with $785.8 million from the US and Canada and roughly $1.236 billion from international markets, making it the first Spider-Man movie ever to cross $2 billion and the first non-Avengers superhero film to do so. As of its sixth weekend, the film had grossed roughly $2.4 billion worldwide and had topped the North American chart for six consecutive weekends a feat no film had managed since Avatar: The Way of Water in 2022. Worldwide, the film has crossed $2.45 billion.
What It Means for Marvel and Sony
This win lands at a pointed moment for Marvel. Brand New Day marks a needed victory for Marvel, which endured a rough 2025 at the box office with commercial disappointments like Captain America: Brave New World and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Sony, which co-produces the Spider-Man franchise with Marvel Studios under its long-running deal, gets an even bigger win: its most successful theatrical release in company history.
Sony's motion picture chairman Tom Rothman sent an internal note celebrating the achievement, titled "Moments That Make History," after the film overtook Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the highest-grossing movie ever at the domestic box office. It's a symbolic moment for a studio that has spent years trying to prove its Spider-Man universe can compete with Disney's in-house Marvel slate and this time, the numbers back it up unambiguously.
The India Angle: A Parallel Record-Breaking Run
For Indian audiences, this isn't just a Hollywood curiosity Brand New Day rewrote records on home turf too. The film dethroned Avengers: Endgame's long-standing Day 1 record in India, opening across 17,250 shows and collecting ₹60.60 crore net on its first day, comfortably beating Endgame's ₹53.10 crore.
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The film secured the widest release in Indian cinema history, playing across more than 5,000 screens and setting a record for the highest number of shows ever played for a film in the country, releasing in six languages English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. It also widened its lead over Ranveer Singh's Dhurandhar, which had earned ₹60 crore net over the same opening period compared to Brand New Day's ₹109.95 crore.
What Happens Next
The obvious next question one every outlet covering this story is asking is whether Brand New Day can become the first film ever to cross $1 billion domestically. Industry watchers now wonder whether the film has the endurance to become the first movie in history to reach $1 billion at the domestic box office, though that outcome looks unlikely at this point without a theatrical re-release.
There's also the matter of legacy. Adjusted for inflation, neither Brand New Day nor The Force Awakens ranks in the all-time top five a useful reality check for readers tempted to read "biggest ever" as an absolute superlative rather than an unadjusted-dollars record. Still, the reign of Brand New Day may last only a few months rather than the decade The Force Awakens enjoyed, given how close recent challengers (Endgame, No Way Home) have come in years past.
