Spider-Man: Brand New Day is tracking $280M–$310M for the second-biggest opening in history; The Odyssey gives up its premium screens

Opening weekend ranges here are anything as low as $180M to as high as $300M+ — a huge divide. We are taking the high side, and we are not splitting the difference. Our forecast now points to over $300M, up from $280–310M on Tuesday, itself up from $230–250M a week earlier, and these revisions have been driven by the only hard data anybody actually has: presales. The trade estimates that keep getting quoted are very, very conservative here. Deadline has $180–190M, Box Office Theory landed at $249M on July 24, and Sony itself is out at $195M. The trackers watching seats sold, not sentiment, are at $300M+ and have been climbing all week. When the gap is this wide, side with the number that comes from transactions.

Here is what our range actually means. At $280M this would be the second-biggest opening in the history of the domestic box office, clearing Spider-Man: No Way Home’s $260.1M from 2021 and Avengers: Infinity War’s $257.7M, with only Endgame’s $357.1M above it. At $310M it is within striking distance of a record that has stood for seven years. It is also 2026’s biggest opening by roughly $130M over Toy Story 5’s $160.0M, which is not a race so much as a rewrite. And No Way Home turned its $260.1M start into $804.8M domestic; even ordinary legs on the low end of our band put this film past $700M and into the argument for the biggest domestic run since Endgame. Even if we assume extreme frontloading, it’s hard to see this anywhere below $650M as the domestic final.

What matters here is that people are genuinely interested in what happens as the next chapter in Holland’s Spider-Man story. No Way Home finished up with Peter Parker wiping the memory of himself from all the people he loved the most; naturally we all want to see what happens next. The trailers have sold that human element instead of focusing on big CGI battles, grounding the film and connecting to what people actually care about — the characters and the story. It also doesn’t hurt that No Way Home ended up with a mammoth $804M domestically (3rd biggest of all-time) and $1.92B worldwide (8th biggest of all-time). A lot of people saw the last one, a lot of people liked it, and a lot of people can’t wait to see what happens next. This time around, reviews are just as good at 91% Certified Fresh from 158 critics so far.

The overseas half is already reporting, and it is enormous. China opened Tuesday, ahead of the domestic date, and did a projected $37.4M on day one — the biggest superhero opening in that market in seven years. For scale, Venom: The Last Dance did $9.4M on its first day there in 2024, and Spider-Man: Far From Home, the last U.S. superhero film to clear $100M in China, opened to $98M for the full weekend on its way to $199M. Local analysts have the full China run at $255–265M. Stack that against a global launch that the conservative camp puts at $425M and the aggressive camp puts near $800M, and the second-biggest worldwide debut ever is genuinely on the table. Only Avengers: Endgame would sit ahead of it.

Last week we argued that The Odyssey would hold strong in weekend two because Nolan owned every large-format screen in the country until Spider-Man took them on July 31. It held at -27%, the best second weekend of his career and the best hold for any film opening over $100M… ever. Now the real test happens: can it hold up against the blue whale that is Brand New Day? We’re going to argue it absolutely can and will, albeit with a larger drop this time around, just due to sheer competition for screens, especially large format/PLF. It should still survive a 50% slide, but we may be in store for something in the 40’s. That would give it a weekend approaching $50M+.

The chart is already telling us who this audience is. Monday and Tuesday were down just 21% and 24% from last week. On Discount Tuesday, The Odyssey rose 12% from Monday. Moana rose 75%, Minions & Monsters 72%, Toy Story 5 65%. That 12% is the smallest bump of any wide release in the top ten, and it is a compliment: this is a premium-format crowd paying premium prices that does not go looking for a $6 ticket. It is also precisely why the screen handoff bites harder here than it would for a film whose audience is buying on price. For context on the week-three baseline, Oppenheimer fell 37.6% on this same late-July frame in 2023, The Dark Knight 43.2%, Barbie 43.0%, and Deadpool & Wolverine 44.5% — none of them against a $280M+ opening.

$50M this frame puts The Odyssey around $385M in 19 days and moves it past Project Hail Mary’s $344.1M by Sunday and Michael’s $372.3M within days of that, taking third on the 2026 chart outright. After this weekend, it’s smooth sailing for Odysseus, and expect this to hang around all the way through August and into September. $500M was locked after last weekend, and we’re still expecting a finish somewhere around $550M, taking it past The Dark Knight’s $533M to become Nolan’s biggest film of all time. That being said, $600M is not out of the question by any stretch. Worldwide by Sunday should be approaching $900M with the billion mark set to be smashed next week as it shoots for Deadpool & Wolverine’s $1.3B all-time R-Rated record.

Third place is a genuine scrum this weekend, and Toy Story 5 should take it on the strength of holds as the default family movie for the rest of the summer. It fell 26% last frame, its softest drop of the run, and Spider-Man does not compete for its audience the way another family title would. It has already beaten the previous biggest in the franchise and already crossed $1B, so at this point it’s all gravy. While it probably won’t get all the way to $500M domestic, it should come close, crossing $480 at least. It’s still the top film domestically and worldwide for 2026, and will hold that title for another week or two before it drops down to third as Spider-Man and The Odyssey slam into and right past it.

Minions & Monsters is the quietly profitable underdog. A $37.0M opening looked like a disappointment for the brand in early July; but three straight holds of -43%, -36% and -28% later it is at $159.5M on 4.3x legs and $418.2M worldwide against an $85M budget. Our model has it finishing at $194M, and the drops keep getting smaller rather than larger, which is the only reliable sign that a family title has found repeat business rather than a front-loaded opening. A hold near 30% this weekend gets it to roughly $166M and keeps $200M live. It could find its way close to half a billion worldwide when all is said and done.

We called $10–13M and a ~32% hold for Moana last week; it did $10.6M on a 41% drop, inside the range on the gross and softer on the hold than the other two family films. It should start falling behind them as the summer goes on; it’s clearly got the worst reception and will find itself with the worst final total. Our model finishes it at $128M domestic against a $250M budget, and no amount of open family calendar changes that arithmetic. It is a write-off that is behaving decently on its way down, which is a real distinction, just not a redeeming one. Good for cinemas; bad for Disney.

Hadestown: The Musical did something on Tuesday that no other film in the top ten did: it fell. Down 17% to $1.8M while every wide release around it rose between 12% and 75% on the Discount Tuesday bump. That is the live-capture profile arriving early — a fixed, motivated theatre audience that turns out in the first four days and is largely spent by the second week. A 60% second-weekend drop is the base case, landing around $4M for a cume near $19M. Against a $5M budget on a 100% Tomatometer and a 99% audience score, this is already a substantial win for Bleecker Street and the biggest live-capture opening since Hamilton.