No one expected Spider-Man: Brand New Day to flop — its box office projections were set incredibly high for a reason — but the speed at which it surpassed those projections, going on to break record after record, was something of a shock, too. In just a month and change, Marvel’s fourth Spider-Man film has emerged as the highest-grossing film of the year, toppling The Odyssey and Obsession at this year’s box office. But it hasn’t stopped there, either: with its domestic gross now charting around $936 million, it’s now the highest-grossing film (in the U.S.) ever, dethroning the last-reigning champ, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, for the title.
Brand New Day is still enjoying a comfortable run in theaters, so it could easily wind up grossing $1 billion before its time is up, inching closer to the #2 and #1 highest-grossing films of all time: Avengers: Endgame and Avatar. If nothing else, its success has affirmed that a character like Spider-Man remains the exception to pesky unknowns like superhero fatigue. But this upset might also make Star Wars fans just a little uneasy about the stock of their favorite franchise.
