ALBAWABA - Spider-Man: Brand New Day shatters preview box office records.
When it comes to breaking box office records this weekend, Spider-Man: Brand New Day will do whatever a spider can, beginning tonight as the Sony/Marvel Studios co-production outperforms the Thursday night previews of the 2021 previous chapter Spider-Man: No Way Home, which grossed $50 million. All of this makes sense, given the $80 million in advance ticket sales reported for Tom Holland and Zendaya's $225 million net production.
No Way Home (with previews beginning at 3 p.m. on its debut Thursday) earned the third best previews ever, trailing only 2019's Avengers: Endgame's $60 million (6 p.m. start time) and 2015's Star Wars: Force Awakens' $57 million Thursday night. With more than $50 million, Brand New Day now has the third-best U.S./Canada theatre previews ever, the best previews ever for a Sony film, and the best previews since Covid. The Spider-Man sequel, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, premiered today at 12 p.m., and its preview will feature a Prime Video member screening on Wednesday night. According to some sources, the preview money for Brand New Day tonight exceeded that of Avengers: Endgame. We'll know if it's higher tomorrow morning.
No Way Home's $50 million previews represented only 41% of its $121.96 million debut Friday. This resulted in the second biggest opening ever at the American box office, with $260.1 million trailing Avengers: Endgame's all-time high of $357.1 million. Force Awakens' $57 million in previews amounted to 48% of its first Friday revenue of $119.1 million. Force Awakens' 3-day start of $247.96 was formerly the all-time opening record in North America, but it subsequently slid to fourth. NRG estimated a low domestic opening of $195 million for Brand New Day, but exhibitors and other tracking services, such as Greenlight Analytics, predict it will be much higher, ranging from $260 million to $300 million.
Some experts begin to nerd out, claiming that we should include the start time for the previews here on Brand New Day, as well as the time of year, when making forecasts. Seriously, it doesn't matter: this is a lot of money and the biggest we've seen in a long time, surpassing Deadpool and Wolverine's previous post-Covid preview record of $38.5 million set two Julys ago.
The other astonishing thing about this Spider-Man is that he's making all of this money without the use of Imax screens (which we saw Barbie do three years ago when Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer grabbed them).
So far, Brand New Day has the highest Rotten Tomatoes audience score of the nine live-action Spider-Man films, with 98%. The critical score is strong at 90% certified fresh, barely shy of No Way Home's 93%.
