2026 Breaking An 11-Year-Long Box Office Record Proves Cinema Is Healing

Published Sep 23, 2026, 11:50 AM EDT

Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture.

2026 breaking a major box office record for the first time in 11 years through its biggest movie hit is proof the world of movies and cinema is healing following the hardships of the past years. While cinema has always been an area with ebbs and flows when it comes to the popularity of going to the theater over the years, the past decade has faced some unique challenges in terms of box office results.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were multifold, as cinemas were closed and production processes were delayed in the short term, but this has also had a far more long-term impact when studying the broader sphere of box office results over the past years, since movies have had to be convincing enough to encourage audiences to go back to cinemas after often years away from them.

With that said, more recent history has shown the ways in which the cinema landscape does appear to be showing signs of healing in various aspects. This is especially clear with 2026's new box office record, which marks this year as the first in over a decade to hit a lofty milestone, thanks to the impressive fiscal results that one major movie has obtained.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Breaking The Domestic Box Office Record Previously Held By Star Wars: The Force Awakens For 11 Years Is Huge For The World Of Movies

Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing

As of September 2026, Spider-Man: Brand New Day's domestic box office results have risen to sky-high amounts, with Sony Pictures Entertainment having announced that the film's domestic gross has reached the point of $936.77 million.

This is impressive by itself, but is doubly impressive since it makes Spider-Man: Brand New Day the highest-grossing movie of all time in terms of its domestic earnings (not accounting for inflation), with the prior holder of this title being that of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which held the record with its own $936.66 million domestic gross from its release in 2015 up until now.

Naturally, this is a major record for the 2026 Spider-Man movie to hold, especially since it does so after the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent effects on the world of cinema, which cut to an effective standstill back in 2020, and which still has other aftereffects that can be evidenced up until today.

Though much of the modern landscape of cinema still has its own share of obstacles to overcome much as any period in history, the results of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and the record they set do paint a promising picture in terms of showing how major box office hits are well and truly possible today, and how home audiences especially are fully ready to turn up en masse for things that resonate with them.

2026 Building On 2025's Impressive Box Office Record Bodes Well For The Future Of Cinema

©CMC Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

2026 breaking this domestic box office record for the first time in 11 years is all the more promising in terms of what it suggests is possible for the future of cinema in the months and years yet to come given both 2026 and 2025 have also each involved staggering box office results that very much demonstrate the ample potential for big film hits if things are made just so.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day's overall box office results are naturally high given the impressive domestic gross the film has obtained thus far, with its $2.4 billion worldwide box office making the film currently the third highest grossing movie of all time, beaten only by Avengers: Endgame and Avatar.

Impressively, the year prior also saw a similar success, as Ne Zha 2 earned $2.2 billion worldwide in 2025, making it currently the sixth highest-grossing film in history also. This supports the idea that Spider-Man: Brand New Day's results weren't an outlier for this time period bolstered solely by our unending love of the web-swinging hero, and makes the prospect of similar success happening in the near future seem all the more likely.

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  Peter Parker / Spider-Man

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  Jean Grey

Four years after No Way Home, Peter Parker lives alone, forgotten by everyone he loves, and devotes himself entirely to being Spider-Man.