Could it be that Hollywood’s superheroes have begun to rediscover their powers in China? Perhaps not yet — but their friendly neighborhood standard-bearer certainly has.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened across China on Wednesday at a pace the market has not seen for a U.S. comic-book movie in at least seven years, earning more than $16.5 million (RMB 112 million) by midday, with local ticketing giant Maoyan projecting a $37.4 million (RMB 254 million) first-day total. No other superhero title has come close to such heights since Spider-Man: Far From Home bowed to $36 million in 2019. Sitting in a distant second is Venom: The Last Dance with $9.4 million earned on its first day on Chinese screens in 2024.
And Chinese box-office trackers foresee even bigger things for Tom Holland’s latest swing in the spider suit. Maoyan’s full-run forecast, published on the eve of release, pegs the film’s ultimate China total at a whopping $255 million (RMB 1.73 billion), with rival tracker Dengta going higher still at more than $265 million (RMB 1.8 billion). Such projections routinely get revised as a run matures — day-one forecasts especially — but a finish anywhere near that range would rank as Hollywood’s biggest China gross since Avengers: Endgame in 2019, surpassing even Avatar: The Way of Water‘s $246 million.
The Beijing industry has been buzzing all week about Brand New Day‘s box-office potential. Presales finished at $18.6 million (RMB 126.2 million) — the best of any imported film of the past three summers.
The film appears to be benefiting from some pent-up demand for Marvel’s most iconic character. Spider-Man: Far From Home, the last entry to play in Chinese theaters, opened to a strong $98 million over its debut weekend in 2019, finishing at $199 million. That title remains the last U.S. superhero film to clear $100 million in China. Huge sales were expected for its follow-up, the $1.92 billion-grossing Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), but the film never opened in China after local regulators reportedly balked at the prominence of the Statue of Liberty in the movie’s climax, and Sony declined to cut around it.
In the years since, U.S. superhero cinema has fallen out of favor in China even more dramatically than elsewhere. Marvel titles were blocked from the market by regulators from mid-2019 to early 2023, and earnings since the ban have been comparatively withering. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($87 million in 2023) and Venom: The Last Dance ($94 million in 2024) stand as the era’s biggest superhero totals, while nearly all other recent entries have limped to sums in the low teens. Chinese audiences, meanwhile, have transferred their enthusiasm to homegrown blockbusters.
But Spider-Man has always stood apart, and Sony and Marvel courted the market accordingly. China was given the world’s earliest release date for Brand New Day — Wednesday’s bow comes two days ahead of North America’s — along with an exclusive Imax launch unavailable to fans in the U.S., where large-format screens remain occupied by Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Holland and Zendaya flew to China for last week’s local premiere in Shanghai, where Holland charmed local media with an account of Jackie Chan visiting the film’s London set (the Chinese action icon’s famed stunt team reportedly helped choreograph some of Brand New Day‘s action sequences).
Directed by Shang-Chi‘s Destin Daniel Cretton, Brand New Day picks up four years after No Way Home, with a forgotten Peter Parker protecting New York alone — and the strain beginning to weigh on him. The film has earned strong reviews from critics, with its Rotten Tomatoes’ score currently hovering around 90 percent. Analysts are projecting a North America opening in the $180 million range for a global launch over $425 million.
