Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
There is a new Spider-Man film. Tom Holland is the star. Many people are watching it.
The film has made a lot of money. In the United States and Canada, it has made more than 900 million dollars.
Only one film has made more money there. That film is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, from 2015.
The Spider-Man film is still in cinemas. Soon it may be number one.
- film
- a story you watch on a screen; a movie
- star
- the main actor in a film
- money
- coins and notes used to buy things
- million
- the number 1,000,000
- cinema
- a building where people go to watch films
- watch
- to look at something for a time
- number one
- the best or first place
- dollar
- the money used in the United States
Level 2 — Elementary
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has become the second highest earning film ever at the North American box office. It has taken more than 858 million dollars there, passing Avengers: Endgame by a very small margin.
It also reached 900 million dollars in North America in just 36 days. No film has ever done that so quickly.
The film already holds another record. Its opening weekend brought in 360 million dollars, the biggest first weekend in history.
Only Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which took 936.6 million dollars in 2015, is still ahead. Because Spider-Man is still showing in cinemas, most people expect it to take first place soon.
- box office
- the money a film earns from ticket sales
- earn
- to receive money in return for something
- margin
- the amount by which one thing beats another
- record
- the best result ever achieved
- opening weekend
- the first Friday to Sunday a film is shown
- domestic
- inside one's own country; here, the United States and Canada
- ahead
- in front of, in a better position
- expect
- to think that something will happen
Level 3 — Intermediate
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has climbed to number two on the all-time domestic box office chart, edging past Avengers: Endgame with 858.4 million dollars against Endgame's 858.3 million. A margin of one hundred thousand dollars, on totals approaching a billion, is close enough to be decided by a single busy afternoon in a handful of theatres.
The speed is the more remarkable statistic. The film crossed 900 million dollars in North America in 36 days, faster than any release in history, and it had already set the record for the largest opening weekend ever at 360 million dollars. Studios normally regard a strong second weekend as a hold of around 50 percent; this one held far better than that, which is what allowed the running total to climb rather than merely coast.
Ahead of it sits only Star Wars: The Force Awakens, whose 936.6 million dollars has led the North American chart since 2015. The gap is now small enough that the question is not whether Brand New Day passes it but in which week. The film remains in wide release, and franchise pictures of this scale typically continue earning for another month.
There is a caveat worth stating plainly. These are unadjusted figures, meaning they ignore inflation and the steady rise in ticket prices. Measured in tickets sold rather than dollars taken, the all-time domestic leader remains Gone with the Wind, and it is not close. What the record really demonstrates is that a small number of enormous franchise releases now account for a disproportionate share of cinema attendance.
- edge past
- to move just barely ahead of something
- margin
- the difference between two amounts or scores
- release
- a film that has been made available to the public
- hold
- how well a film keeps its audience from one week to the next
- franchise
- a series of films built around the same characters
- unadjusted
- not changed to take account of inflation
- caveat
- a warning that something is not the whole story
- disproportionate
- much larger than would be expected or fair
Level 4 — Advanced
With 858.4 million dollars in North America, Spider-Man: Brand New Day has displaced Avengers: Endgame from second place on the all-time domestic chart by roughly one hundred thousand dollars, a margin so slight that it will be revised more than once before the studios stop counting. The symbolic weight of the milestone is nonetheless considerable, because Endgame has functioned since 2019 as the benchmark against which every subsequent tentpole has been measured.
The velocity is the genuinely unprecedented figure. Thirty-six days to 900 million dollars domestically compresses a timeline that the previous record holder took materially longer to complete, and it follows an opening weekend of 360 million dollars that itself broke Endgame's record. Crucially, the film then held rather than collapsed: second-weekend attrition, the metric distributors watch most closely because it separates an event from a phenomenon, came in well under the 50-odd percent that a saturation release of this size normally concedes.
Only Star Wars: The Force Awakens and its 936.6 million dollars remain above it, a total that has stood unchallenged for eleven years. Brand New Day is still in wide release, and a picture with this legs profile will accumulate for weeks yet, so the interesting question has shifted from whether the record falls to what its falling signifies. The answer is not that audiences have returned to cinemas in aggregate; theatrical attendance remains well below its pre-2020 baseline. It is that the attendance which survives has concentrated, ruthlessly, around a shrinking number of very large titles.
Every one of these comparisons should carry an asterisk. Unadjusted grosses conflate ticket volume with ticket price, and premium formats, which now carry surcharges of several dollars, are disproportionately represented in exactly these releases. Corrected for inflation, the domestic leader remains Gone with the Wind by a margin no modern film approaches. The record being set this month is therefore a real commercial achievement and a somewhat misleading historical claim, and the industry has an obvious incentive not to distinguish between the two.
- displace
- to take the position previously held by something else
- tentpole
- a very large film a studio relies on to support its year
- velocity
- the speed at which something happens
- attrition
- a gradual reduction in numbers or strength
- saturation release
- opening a film in a very large number of cinemas at once
- legs
- a film's ability to keep earning over many weeks
- conflate
- to combine two different things as if they were one
- surcharge
- an extra amount added to the usual price
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