Sony/Marvel Studio’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossed the $1 billion mark on Monday becoming the second fastest to movie to reach that global milestone after 2019’s Avengers: Endgame which opened to $1.22 billion worldwide. Current running cume on the Destin Daniel Cretton directed pic is $1.052 billion.
Again, have to emphasize, but this billion dollar feat comes sans Imax in North America, which provides blockbuster hope for Disney/Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Doomsday at Christmas time. That said, Spidey had Imax in those countries where Odyssey hasn’t raided yet, i.e. Japan, Korea and China.
In regards to why this movie is working, Sony Pictures Motion Pictures Chairman Tom Rothman told Deadline, “Whether you live in Peru, Pakistan, or Peoria, everyone wants friends and wants connection with everyone. Fundamentally this is a movie about friendship and hope.”
While Sony and the filmmakers couldn’t beat the pinnacle of three Spider-Mans in the previous 2021 No Way Home, they went deeper with a pointed character-driven story centering around Peter Parker and a complex villain, who audiences empathize with, in Sadie Sink’s X-Men Jean Gray.
“We led with emotion,” says Rothman about the marketing campaign,which incorporated that tone in the first trailer which became the most watched ever with 719M views in its first 24 hours and 1.1 billion its first four days. At that extended level, the Brand New Day online trailer was the most watched ever in the motion picture and gaming industry.
“We stayed with that emotion all the day (throughout the campaign). For all the whiz-bang, the audience doesn’t care about what a movie costs, they care about how it makes them feel. We kept the emotion and the character front and center.”
Also driving this billion dollar superhero is the star wattage of married couple, Tom Holland and Zendaya, who had a double grand slam of a pr tour in July with The Odyssey, the twosome making global red carpet stops for both films across Madrid, London, Paris, Rome, Shanghai and more. Was that a problem for a studio boss to have two stars promoting two tentpoles at the same time? Would a studio boss have even allowed that in the 1980s, 1990s or early 2000s?
Rothman had no problem. He received a phone call from Holland a year ago, alerting him to the situation. “We had to adjust our timing and our plan. Tom Holland, Zendaya along with Jon Bernthal fully supported both films and both films benefited. This reminds me of what the late great distribution exec Tom Sherak said, ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ When people go to the movies, they value experience and that’s what we’ve been needing to do in our business.”
The social media universe reach for Brand New Day across TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X and Instagram per analytics corp RelishMix reached a record 2.86 billion followers before opening. Says Social Media Marketing Exec Mara Freedman of Storyd Media, who has worked on several Hollywood pics, about the Zendaya-Holland wattage factor, “Sony lucked out because the film’s stars are private in real life, yet fans are clamoring to know more. The parasocial appetite of audiences wanting to see wedding photos that they will never get –so much so that a crop of ai generated photos circulated earlier this year– means seeing Hollander and Zendaya on screen or doing press for their films together is likely the only place you will see them as a couple.”
In regards to superhero fatigue, Rothman doesn’t believe in it: “There’s audience fatigue in any genre especially if you do the same thing over a dover again.”
What excites him with Brand New Day is the complicated villain in Jean Gray, a character similar to Magneto in the first X-Men movie which Rothman worked at 20th Century Fox in 2000. That pic begins with Magneto as a young boy in Auschwitz. “Is he a villain or the victim?” Rothman says.
“This young woman, Jean Gray, you think is the villain is actually the victim. One of the greatest structural ideas in Peter Parker’s heroism is not defeating the villain, but rescuing the villain from a sad road she might otherwise go down.”
In regards to future Spider-Mans with Marvel, Rothman said that the deal with the Disney label is on a picture by picture basis (you’ll remember there was a lot of agita to get No Way Home off the ground.
“I hope Tom Holland comes back,” Rothman tells us; the actor already voicing that he’s in for another (no deals are in place).
Broken out Spider-Man: Brand New Day had a record Monday in U.S./Canada with $47M per Sony (up from the $46M we just told you about) putting the running domestic at $407M. Updated foreign cume is $645.8M having clocked a No. 1 opening in 66 markets across 82 territories where the movie set all-time opening records in France, India, Brazil, Spain, Peru, Colombia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Turkey, Ecuador, Belgium, Portugal, Ukraine, South Africa, Kenya, and Mongolia. The sequel also had regional opening weekend records across Latin America and the Middle East. Updated comes are as follows:
- China $132.9M
- United Kingdom $55.6M
- Mexico $43.6M
- India $35.4M
- France $31.4M
- South Korea $28.0M
- Brazil $27.7M
- Australia $23.4M
- Germany $22.5M
- Italy $20.7M
It takes a village to create a record-breaking feature tentpole and props are given here on Brand New Day to Sony’s Head of Global Theatrical Marketing, Danielle Misher; President of International Marketing and Distribution, Steven O’Dell; EVP of Global Creative Advertising, Erik Counter; EVP Global Marketing, Joe Whitmore, and Domestic Distribution Boss Adam Bergman.
We told you first that Brand New Day had the biggest promo partner campaign in Hollywood history with $309M thanks to partnerships with Samsung, BMW, McDonalds and Little Caesars.
To support the second trailer, Sony Pictures launched SpideyTracker.com, an interactive fan experience that attracted 1M+ visits, becoming one of the studio’s most-visited websites ever. The official @SpideyTracker X account inspired thousands of fan submissions and was amplified by X’s @Movies account. The SpideyTracker also appeared in the movie.
There were several marketing digital and mobile stunts including Spidey appearing in Google Maps Street View, which sent fans on a global scavenger hunt to discover real-world locations and hidden Easter eggs.
There was also two Google Search Easter Eggs, including a custom Spider-Man animation and a first-to-market AI Mode Easter egg triggered by the search “Who is Peter Parker?”