‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Just Cracked the All-Time Top 3, Leaving ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ in the Dust

Sony and Marvel’s latest Spider-Man outing has spent its entire theatrical run rewriting box office expectations, but even the most bullish predictions couldn’t have anticipated just how far this film would climb. What started as a record-breaking opening weekend has since evolved into one of the most dominant theatrical runs in cinema history.

Much of that dominance has come from the film’s international performance, one that’s kept pulling in massive numbers even as competing blockbusters like ‘The Odyssey’ battle for the same audience overseas. Week after week, industry trackers have marveled at just how gently the film’s numbers have declined compared to typical blockbuster patterns.

That resilience culminated in a genuinely historic milestone over the past several days. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ has officially crossed $2.3 billion worldwide, surpassing ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’s’ $2.33 billion lifetime haul to become the third highest-grossing film of all time at the global box office, according to figures shared by Luiz Fernando.

The film’s fifth weekend overseas alone brought in a strong $44.5 million, representing just a 36.4% drop compared to the previous frame. That kind of hold compares extremely favorably against past blockbuster benchmarks, easily outpacing ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’s’ 48.1% decline and ‘Avengers: Endgame’s’ steeper 65.2% drop at the equivalent point in their own runs, with the film’s international cume now sitting at $1.44 billion across 66 markets.

Combined with its $891.8 million domestic total, and against a reported net production budget of $225 million before marketing costs, ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ has now locked in a $2.33 billion global cume. That figure already surpasses where both ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ stood at the equivalent point in their theatrical runs.

After overtaking ‘Titanic’s’ lifetime gross just a week earlier, ‘Brand New Day’ has now also passed ‘Avatar: The Way of Water,’ officially claiming a spot in cinema’s all-time top three, trailing only James Cameron’s original ‘Avatar’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame.’ The film reached the $2 billion threshold in just 17 days, making it the second-fastest movie in history to hit that mark behind only ‘Endgame’ itself.

That achievement puts ‘Brand New Day’ in genuinely rare company. It’s now surpassed not only every superhero film other than ‘Endgame,’ but also both ‘Titanic’ and ‘Ne Zha 2,’ two films with radically different audiences and release contexts, all in roughly 31 days of release, compared to the 13 months it took ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ to reach the same territory during its original theatrical run.

With $2.5 billion now considered locked in and industry trackers eyeing a global run somewhere between $2.5 and $2.7 billion, ‘Brand New Day’ still has plenty of room left to keep climbing the all-time charts. Domestically, the film’s $891.8 million total also has it closing in on ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’s’ long-standing North American record of $936.7 million, a milestone that could realistically fall before Labor Day weekend wraps up.

For a film already being called Sony’s biggest hit of all time, cracking the global top three feels like the natural next step in a theatrical run that’s shown almost no signs of slowing down since its record-breaking debut in July.

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