LOS ANGELES — Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” opened to $360 million in the United States and Canada, according to actual figures reported Monday, surpassing the all-time opening weekend record and, in the process, extending the weekend in which it opened to include Monday.
The film had been estimated Sunday at $355 million, about $2.1 million short of the $357.1 million record set by “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019. Monday’s revision added $5 million to the total and, according to the National Council of Weekend Estimators, approximately 31 hours to the weekend, which now officially runs from Thursday evening previews through Monday at about 3 p.m. Eastern.
“Ordinarily, when an estimate is revised, the number changes and the weekend stays where it is,” said Ross Feldkamp, the council’s executive secretary. “In this case, the number needed somewhere to go.”
The film’s opening set several other records. Its Thursday previews earned $72 million, and its Friday, including those previews, earned $169.3 million, the largest single day in box office history, ahead of the $157.4 million earned by “Endgame.” The weekend expanded further on Tuesday. Office workers in 11 states reported to work Tuesday morning and were informed by their employers that it was still technically Sunday, and a number of school districts that had scheduled the first day of classes for this week were advised by the council that their students had, in fact, not yet finished the weekend. At 6:15 a.m. Tuesday, the council described the weekend as “approximately 4.6 days long and stable,” and then, at 6:22 a.m., revised that figure upward.
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center’s records show that the average opening weekend has lengthened by 0.38 days per decade since 1975, “almost entirely during the weekends of very large movies.” Teller said further study was needed and that the Center had submitted a funding request to be reviewed over the weekend, “which should give the reviewers until about Thursday.”
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said the weekend has always been more elastic than people assume. “In 1840s Lancashire, a ribbon fair sold so much more ribbon than expected that it was declared to have lasted 11 days, and the town did not observe a Tuesday again until 1851,” Achterberg said. “The scholarship on this is unambiguous, mainly because I have not let anyone else work on it.”
Worldwide, the film opened to $932 million, second only to the $1.22 billion global debut of “Endgame.” Box office trackers said the international weekend had not yet been revised into Monday, as it was already Monday in most of those countries, and had been for some time.
Theater operators said Tuesday that they were preparing for the film’s second weekend, which is scheduled to begin Friday, pending the conclusion of the first.