Tom Holland Just Pulled Off A Box Office Feat Only A Handful Of Stars Have Ever Managed
Hollywood has spent much of 2026 wondering whether the theatrical blockbuster still has real staying power. Ticket sales have been unpredictable all year, with plenty of high profile releases struggling to find an audience against a backdrop of streaming competition and shifting viewing habits. Then came a stretch of weeks that seemed to answer the question all on its own, with two very different films anchored by the same British actor.
Tom Holland spent the back half of July and the start of August starring in a pair of massive theatrical releases that arrived within weeks of each other. One was Christopher Nolan’s sprawling adaptation of Homer’s epic poem ‘The Odyssey,’ featuring Holland alongside Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway. The film follows Odysseus, played by Damon, on his journey home after the Trojan War. The other was Sony and Marvel’s ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ Holland’s fourth outing as Peter Parker.
Both movies have now crossed the billion dollar mark worldwide, and the numbers tell a genuinely rare story. ‘The Odyssey’ has reached 1.1 billion dollars globally, while ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ leads the pack at 1.67 billion dollars worldwide. It is one of the rarest flexes an actor can pull off, headlining two separate billion dollar hits running in theaters at the same time.
The Spider-Man sequel got there almost instantly. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ grossed over 1 billion dollars globally in its first six days of release, making it the second fastest film ever to reach that milestone behind only ‘Avengers: Endgame.’ The film opened with 407 million dollars domestically and 645.8 million dollars internationally on its way to that number, and it also broke the record for the biggest domestic opening weekend in box office history, previously held by ‘Endgame.’
‘The Odyssey’ took a slightly slower but no less impressive path to the same milestone. The film became the first non Batman project in Christopher Nolan’s career to cross a billion dollars, with his prior closest attempt being 2023’s ‘Oppenheimer,’ which topped out at 975.8 million dollars. By its first month in release, ‘The Odyssey’ had made 1.104 billion dollars worldwide, officially passing 2012’s ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ to become Nolan’s highest grossing film of his entire career.
The overlap between the two releases has become its own talking point in the industry. With ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ swinging into cinemas soon after ‘The Odyssey’ had already built momentum, the two films seemed to feed off each other rather than compete, helping produce the best domestic box office weekend the United States has ever recorded. Sony chief Tom Rothman celebrated the moment in blunt terms, telling Variety that what happened with ‘Spider-Man’ felt miraculous and that the film was uniting people across cultures and ages.
For Holland, it caps a stretch that started with him swinging back into the Spidey suit for the first time since 2021’s ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and somehow ended with him also anchoring one of the biggest awards season contenders of the year. Few actors get to headline two films that dominate the summer box office simultaneously, let alone two films built on completely different scales and genres. With ‘The Odyssey’ still expanding into major international markets and ‘Brand New Day’ continuing its record run, is there any actor better positioned right now than Tom Holland, and which of these two billion dollar hits do you think deserves the bigger victory lap?
