Spider-Man: Brand New Day is tracking for the biggest opening of 2026. Here is the case for it.

With about two weeks to go before release, Sony and Marvel's Spider-Man: Brand New Day is tracking for a $180 million to $190 million domestic opening weekend, according to three-week industry tracking numbers. (Deadline) If that holds, it would be the biggest opening of any movie released in 2026 so far, ahead of Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5, which opened to $159.6 million earlier this year.

How big is that, really

For context, a $180 million to $190 million start would put Brand New Day second only to 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, which opened to $260.1 million and is still the biggest opening in the character's history. Reporting also points to the strongest first-day presales for a Spider-Man movie since No Way Home, five years ago, and the under-25 male demo is reportedly stronger for this movie than it was for any of the recent comparison titles, No Way Home included. (Deadline)

There is one real obstacle worth flagging. Brand New Day will not get an IMAX release, because Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has locked up an exclusive four-week IMAX run that runs through the Spider-Man opening. Losing IMAX screens usually costs a blockbuster real money on a per-screen basis, but the tracking numbers above already account for that, and the studios still expect a record-setting weekend regardless.

The rest of the box office picture

This weekend also brought a reminder that 2026 has been an unusually strong year for theaters overall. Lionsgate and Universal's Michael crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide after 12 weekends in release, becoming just the second movie to hit that milestone this year, after Universal, Illumination, and Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy, and the first billion-dollar release in Lionsgate's history.

Not everything landed, though. Disney's live-action Moana opened to a soft $43 million domestically and $95 million worldwide, well short of the roughly $130 million studios had reportedly hoped for. It is a good reminder that even a built-in franchise with a beloved animated original is not a guaranteed hit anymore. Audiences are picking their tentpoles more selectively than they used to, which makes the Spider-Man tracking numbers even more notable by comparison.

A horror detour, because I cannot help myself

I promised myself I would not turn every movie post into a horror post, and then this happened anyway. Peacock and A24 dropped the first teaser for Crystal Lake, an eight-episode prequel series to the original Friday the 13th, on July 13. The series follows Pamela Voorhees, played by Linda Cardellini, in the year before the events that turn her into the killer of the original 1980 film, centered on the drowning of her son Jason. The teaser leans hard into dread rather than jump scares, campfire storytelling, a mother screaming her son's name into the lake, and a machete flashing into frame at the end. (TVLine)

Crystal Lake premieres October 15, which puts it right in the sweet spot for a slow October rewatch pile. Giving Pamela Voorhees a real backstory instead of treating her as a twist ending is a smart move, and Cardellini is a strong enough actor to make grief genuinely unsettling before the franchise turns violent. I will absolutely be watching the premiere.

My honest take

As someone who grew up on Spider-Man comics and has sat through every MCU release opening weekend for the better part of a decade, a $180 million to $190 million tracking number two weeks out feels believable rather than hyped. Presales this strong usually hold up, and the demo data suggests this movie is pulling in younger moviegoers who might otherwise be watching a trailer on their phone instead of buying a ticket. Losing IMAX to The Odyssey stings, but Spider-Man movies have never really needed the format to open big. My money is on Brand New Day landing right in the middle of that tracking range, and I will be at a Thursday preview screening to see for myself.

Box office tracking numbers are projections, not final results, and can shift closer to release. For the studio's privacy-first, on-device apps, the full lineup is at jcmobileappstudio.com/apps.