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| credit: Sony Pictures / Marvel |
Eleven years. That is how long the domestic box office record sat untouched, through a pandemic, the streaming boom, and a dozen would-be challengers that all came up short. On Tuesday, September 15, 2026, Spider-Man: Brand New Day finally slipped past Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing movie in U.S. box office history, and it did it by about $110,000, a margin so thin it would barely cover a modest opening-night popcorn order.
The final tally at the moment of the crossing: roughly $936.77 million for the web-slinger against $936.66 million for the 2015 Star Wars film. The record has continued to grow since, climbing past $944 million by the film's eighth weekend and reportedly reaching $955 million domestically in recent days.
How Spider-Man: Brand New Day Broke the Box Office Record
The milestone arrived on what was, by blockbuster standards, a completely ordinary Tuesday. A single-day gross of $915,084 pushed Tom Holland's fourth solo outing as Peter Parker across the line, just 47 days into its theatrical run. Sony made it official the next morning, and the film's Instagram account marked the moment with four words: "Doesn't get bigger than this," thanking fans for helping the movie make cinematic history.
Consider what the old record survived. Star Wars: The Force Awakens set its $936.66 million mark back in December 2015, and nothing touched it for nearly eleven years. Avengers: Endgame, the global box office champion, never got there domestically. Neither did Avatar, Top Gun: Maverick, or Black Panther. An entire generation of moviegoers grew up never knowing a different film at the very top of the domestic chart.
The Cast and Story Behind the Record-Breaking Film
Tom Holland returns as Peter Parker, now truly on his own after the events of the previous film left the world having forgotten who he is. The story brings the character back to street-level crime fighting, a deliberate reset that producers described as making Holland's Parker a proper Spider-Man for the first time.
The supporting cast is stacked. Zendaya returns as MJ, with Jacob Batalon back as Ned Leeds. New additions include Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, and Michael Mando as Mac Gargan, the villain Scorpion. Behind the camera is director Destin Daniel Cretton, for whom this marks the biggest opening of his career.
Audiences responded. The film earned an A CinemaScore and a 90 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating, and strong word of mouth carried it through six straight weekends at number one. The marketing was enormous too, with the trailer reportedly becoming the first movie trailer to pass one billion cumulative views.
By the Numbers: Every Box Office Record It Now Holds
The domestic crown is only part of the story. Globally, the film has grossed approximately $2.45 billion, making it the third-highest-grossing movie in worldwide history, trailing only Avatar and Avengers: Endgame while sitting ahead of Avatar: The Way of Water and Titanic.
The full list of box office records now attached to the film is staggering:
It is the highest-grossing Spider-Man film ever made. It is the highest-grossing solo superhero movie in history. It is the biggest Sony Pictures release of all time. It is the biggest film of 2026 by a wide margin. And Sony noted that Peter Parker himself is now the highest-grossing movie character in history, with a cumulative $17.5 billion worldwide across his appearances.
The film also single-handedly powered the summer movie season to a record-breaking global haul of $4.765 billion, a benchmark that had stood since 2013, with help from heavy hitters like Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, and The Devil Wears Prada 2.
The Top 10 Highest-Grossing Domestic Movies of All Time
For the record books, here is how the domestic chart now looks: Spider-Man: Brand New Day leads at approximately $936.77 million, followed by Star Wars: The Force Awakens at $936.66 million, Avengers: Endgame at $858.37 million, Spider-Man: No Way Home at $814.81 million, Avatar at $785.22 million, Top Gun: Maverick at $722 million, Black Panther at $700.43 million, Avatar: The Way of Water at $688.46 million, and Avengers: Infinity War at $678.82 million. A Spider-Man film now sits at both number one and number four.
What the Record Means for Marvel Movies
This was a desperately needed win for Marvel Studios. After a rocky stretch of uneven releases, Brand New Day proved the studio can still produce a genuine cultural event when the story connects. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has indicated that Holland will take a well-earned break before the broader MCU trajectory continues toward crossover events like Avengers: Doomsday.
The open question now is whether any film can become the first ever to reach $1 billion domestically. Without a re-release, that milestone looks like a stretch even for this record-breaker, as weekday grosses naturally cool with kids back in school and new releases cycling into theaters.
Still, records are made to be broken, and this one took eleven years to fall. The next challenger has a very high bar to clear: $936.77 million, a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and a Tuesday in September that nobody saw coming. The highest-grossing movies list has a new king, and for now, he wears red and blue.
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