Coverage spread: 2 sources — 1 center · 1 international
Lean ratings via AllSides / Media Bias-Fact-Check. How this works.
Where they agree
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, had an exceptionally strong opening, widely praised by critics and fans.
- The film continues the story after No Way Home, with Peter Parker navigating a world that has forgotten his identity due to a memory-erasing spell.
- Both sources note the movie arrives as a needed high point for Marvel Studios following a stretch of underperforming post-Endgame releases.
- Tom Holland’s performance is singled out as a standout, with some calling it his best turn as Spider-Man yet.
- BBC focuses on hard numbers — $927m global and $360m North American opening, record-setting figures, and box office comparisons to Endgame and other 2025 hits.
- Forbes skips financial details almost entirely, instead giving a first-person, spoiler-filled emotional recap of the plot and characters.
- BBC situates the film within a broader 2025 box-office recovery story involving multiple other movies (Toy Story 5, The Odyssey, indie horror hits); Forbes stays narrowly focused on this one film and its place in the MCU’s creative trajectory.
- BBC includes studio-side commentary from Kevin Feige; Forbes relies on personal reaction and references to other critics rather than official statements.
The numbers behind the opening
Spider-Man: Brand New Day, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, pulled in $927m in global ticket sales over its opening weekend, making it the second-biggest opening weekend in box office history. Only Avengers: Endgame, which took in more than $1.2bn in its 2019 debut, sits ahead of it. In North America alone, the film made $360m, setting a new record for the biggest opening weekend ever in the US and Canada.
Outside the US, the film brought in $572m across more than 73,000 screens, including $121m from China and $49m from the UK. Those figures mean the movie’s roughly $225m production budget was recouped within its first three days in theaters. The film opened in cinemas the week before these figures were reported.
Where the story picks up
Brand New Day continues the story a few years after 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Peter Parker is fighting crime in a world that has forgotten he is Spider-Man, the result of a memory-wiping spell from the previous film that erased him from the minds of everyone he loves, including Aunt May, MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon). Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige called the opening “truly phenomenal” and thanked audiences for seeing the film in theaters as intended. The film has drawn largely positive reviews, with some critics and fans calling it Holland’s best performance in the role yet.
Why this matters for Marvel
The result is being read as a significant boost for Marvel Studios ahead of December’s Avengers: Doomsday, which is meant to bring together multiple story threads that have been building since Endgame. Marvel films released since Endgame have generally struggled to draw the audiences the studio once commanded; titles like The Marvels and Thunderbolts covered their costs but ranked among the studio’s weakest performers. Spider-Man has remained an exception — No Way Home alone brought in nearly $2bn worldwide — and Brand New Day’s opening reinforces that the character is still one of the most reliable draws in the franchise.
A broader rebound at the box office
The film’s success comes amid a wider recovery for theatrical releases in 2025, after cinema attendance was slowed for years by the pandemic and the rise of home streaming. North American box office totals are on pace to top $10bn for the first time since 2019, helped by other billion-dollar hits including Toy Story 5, Michael and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, released the same month as Brand New Day, is also tracking toward $1bn. Even outside the blockbuster tier, lower-budget horror films Obsession and Backrooms have each surpassed $390m, suggesting audiences are returning to theaters across a range of genres, not just for franchise tentpoles.
How the coverage differs
The BBC’s coverage is a straightforward box-office and industry report, focused on the financial numbers, what they mean for Marvel’s upcoming slate, and the broader recovery of theatrical releases this year. It treats the film’s plot and critical reception as secondary details supporting the business story. Forbes, by contrast, offers a personal, fan-driven piece — a first-person, spoiler-heavy walkthrough of the film’s emotional beats, focused on Peter Parker’s isolation, his broken relationships with MJ and Ned, and Tom Holland’s performance. It makes almost no mention of box office figures, instead engaging with the film as a piece of storytelling and referencing other critics’ takes on its place among recent Marvel releases.
What’s not yet known
Neither source provides a full plot summary or confirms details about the mind-controlling villain teased in the Forbes piece beyond fragmentary references. It’s also not yet clear from either report how the film’s box office trajectory will hold up in subsequent weekends, or how directly its success will translate into anticipation — or ticket sales — for Avengers: Doomsday in December.
Sources
Featured photo: Favre1fan93 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)