Is "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" going to be the highest-grossing movie of all time?

Just over 2 weeks since its release, past two billion dollars worldwide, a 98% Rotten Tomatoes audience score, and no big theatrical competition on the horizon to steal its momentum.

Every signal says “Spiderman: Brand New Day” is not slowing down. So, I wanted to actually check the number that matters most: can it catch “Avatar” and “Avengers: Endgame” and become the highest grossing movie ever made?

The Data

I wanted to see the trend over time, and the best way to do that is a cohort analysis, so I pulled weekly box office data, both domestic and worldwide, for the top 10 all time box office movies.

There is no clean API for that though. TMDB only stores a lifetime total per movie, and Box Office Mojo blocks automated access to its weekly numbers. So, I built this by hand (with Claude’s help) from trade press (Forbes, Variety, Deadline, Box Office Pro, Rotten Tomatoes editorial), cross checked wherever I could. I aligned every movie by weeks since release, not calendar week, and capped the comparison at the first 15 weeks for all of them.

That last part matters a lot: Avatar, Titanic and a few others on this list have had theatrical re-releases years after their original run, sometimes adding hundreds of millions back to their total. Capping at 15 weeks keeps the comparison to what each movie earned in its original run, apples to apples.

Domestic Box Office: Still Climbing

First question: is the domestic run still growing hard, or already flattening out the way most blockbusters do by week three?First question: is the domestic run still growing hard, or already flattening out the way most blockbusters do by week three?

The curve is not close to flattening. Brand New Day actually crossed Endgame's own domestic pace around week three, and this is with a genuinely wild handicap: it broke the biggest domestic opening weekend of all time with zero IMAX screens. Christopher Nolan's “The Odyssey” had every IMAX screen in North America locked up, and IMAX could not just conjure up several millions more for one weekend.

It only started sharing screens between the two movies starting August 6, a week after Brand New Day already broke the record. Domestic dollars matter more to the studio too, since the split with theatres is far better than international. So yes, domestically, this is an amazing run and can be the highest domestic movie ever.

Worldwide Box Office: A Different Story

Second question: does the same strength hold up worldwide, where Avatar and Endgame actually made most of their money?

Here the picture changes. “Brand New Day” is running at only about 76% to 81% of Endgame's worldwide pace at the same point, Endgame's international opening, especially in China, was just historically strong.

Against “Avatar” it looks dominant early (without taking into account inflation, “Avatar” was released in 2009), running two to four times ahead of Avatar's pace in the first three weeks.

But that comparison flatters “Brand New Day”, because “Avatar” was never a fast opener. It is a marathon. Avatar's original run lasted 36 weeks in theatres, and it has come back for three separate re-releases since, adding hundreds of millions more each time. By week 15 alone, Avatar has already climbed to nearly match where “Endgame” stood at the same point, just on a completely different curve shape.

The Verdict

Domestically, “Brand New Day” is having one of the best runs any movie has ever had, and it is doing it without full IMAX access. That part of the question is a clear yes.

Worldwide is a different answer. Based on the pace so far, I think “Brand New Day” settles in as a very strong number three, not number one. It is not opening like “Endgame” did, and it does not have Avatar's kind of legs, a movie that keeps finding its way back into theatres years later. Beating one of them would already be a huge achievement. Beating both feels like a stretch, unless something unusual happens later in its run.