Spider-Man: Brand New Day has officially passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing movie in domestic box office history, and the Star Wars account itself showed up to congratulate the competition.
The record fell on Tuesday, September 16, 47 days into the film’s run. Sony’s numbers put Brand New Day at $936.773 million domestically, edging past The Force Awakens’ $936.662 million. That’s a margin of about $111,000 on a record that had stood for over a decade, close enough to come down to a single day of ticket sales. The Force Awakens needed 165 days to build its total back in 2015 and 2016. Brand New Day got there in less than a third of the time.
The Star Wars account on X marked the moment with a post referencing Yoda’s line “Impressive. Most impressive,” congratulating director Destin Daniel Cretton, star Tom Holland, and the teams at Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios. It’s a fitting bit of cross-franchise sportsmanship, since Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm are both part of Disney, even though Spider-Man is released by Sony under its longstanding deal with Marvel.
Worldwide, the picture looks a little different. Brand New Day has earned about $2.45 billion globally, good for third all time behind Avatar (roughly $2.92 billion) and Avengers: Endgame (roughly $2.72 billion). It’s already passed Avatar: The Way of Water and left The Force Awakens’ own worldwide total in the dust weeks ago.
Could it climb higher? Catching Endgame would take about $265 million more, which is plausible if China and other international markets keep holding up over the next several weeks. Catching Avatar is a tougher ask, roughly $470 million more from a film already well past its opening rush, and Cameron’s total got a boost over the years from 3D and China re-releases that Brand New Day doesn’t currently have planned. The domestic record is likely to be the headline achievement of this run either way.
