Spider-Man: Brand New Day beat all of Gunn’s DC movies in one weekend
Sony’s blockbuster opened to $927 million worldwide, the biggest domestic debut in history, and out-grossed James Gunn’s Superman, Supergirl, and The Suicide Squad put together. It lands as Gunn’s DC future rides on a box office that keeps getting lapped.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened to $360 million domestically, the biggest opening weekend any movie has ever had. Worldwide, it pulled $927 million.
That single weekend out-grossed every DC movie James Gunn has made, combined.
The record
Sony and Marvel’s Tom Holland film didn’t just have a big debut. It broke the one record everyone assumed was untouchable.
The $360 million domestic haul edged past Avengers: Endgame‘s $357.1 million from 2019, making Brand New Day the largest opening weekend in box office history. Globally, its $927 million is the second-biggest launch ever, behind only Endgame. It helped push the domestic box office to a record weekend north of $429 million.
Those are the kind of numbers that only come along a couple of times a decade.
The DC comparison
Now line it up against Gunn’s DC work, and it gets rough.
Superman finished last year with about $617 million worldwide. Supergirl, which Gunn’s DC Studios produced, collapsed to roughly $126 million. Go back to 2021 and Gunn’s own The Suicide Squad did about $169 million.
Add all three together and you get somewhere around $913 million. That’s three movies, across five years.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day did $927 million in three days. One movie, one weekend, and it still had more than ten million dollars to spare.
Why this one stings
Here’s the part that makes a box office stat more than a box office stat.
Gunn’s DC Universe is the young, expensive bet of a studio that’s about to change hands. Paramount, run by David Ellison, is in the process of buying Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns DC Studios. When that deal closes, Gunn’s franchise gets a new landlord.
And new landlords look hard at the tenant who isn’t paying rent.
Gunn reportedly isn’t getting fired
The reporting does not say Gunn is out.
Yet.
The opposite, actually. Bloomberg reported that Ellison wants to keep Warner Bros.’ creative teams intact, and both Gunn and co-CEO Peter Safran have been named as staying on. The people who’ve talked to Paramount describe Ellison as a fan, someone who visited the DC sets, saw the slate, and told them to keep going. As of now, the plan is that Gunn stays.
Stay tuned.
The word that matters is “contingent”
The catch is what “keeping him” is quietly attached to.
Gunn’s contract runs through 2027. Ellison keeping the creative team is a plan for now, and every version of that plan comes with the same unspoken condition: the movies have to start working. Industry reporting already describes a studio in limbo, with filmmakers struggling to get answers and a slate full of announced projects, The Brave and the Bold, Teen Titans, Swamp Thing, that still have no start dates.
A parent company mid-merger doesn’t greenlight expensive superhero films on faith. It greenlights them on results.
And a $927 million Spider-Man weekend is a very loud way of showing everyone what results are supposed to look like.
Gunn is the weak spot in a winning studio
The uncomfortable context is that Warner Bros. isn’t struggling. It’s thriving.
The studio just became the first ever to open seven straight films to $40 million or more, and it’s cleared $4 billion at the global box office this year on the back of hits like A Minecraft Movie and Sinners. That’s exactly why Ellison wants to keep the creative teams. They’re winning.
Except for one. The DC output under Gunn is the single underperforming piece of an otherwise dominant studio. That’s a precarious place to be standing when a cost-focused new owner walks in with a calculator.
In fairness to Gunn
None of this means the DCU is a failure, and it’s worth keeping the timeline honest.
Superman was a modest success, not a bomb. The universe is genuinely young, only a handful of projects deep, and Gunn still hasn’t had his Batman to play with, though Man of Tomorrow arrives next year to widen the bench. Superhero fatigue is real, and it’s hitting everyone not named Spider-Man. Building a cinematic universe from scratch takes time.
The trouble is that time is the one thing a studio in the middle of a sale is least able to promise.
Gunn has always asked audiences to trust the long game. Long games need an owner patient enough to wait for them. And Spider-Man just reminded that owner exactly how much a short game can be worth.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Variety / Deadline / The Hollywood Reporter — the $360M domestic record, the beating of Endgame, the $927M global opening, and the record North American weekend
Variety — Superman’s ~$617M worldwide total and the DCU-reboot context
Bloomberg (via Yahoo and ScreenRant) — Ellison’s stated plan to keep Warner Bros.’ creative teams, including Gunn and Safran, intact
The John Campea Show (via ComicBookMovie) — Campea’s Paramount sources confirming Gunn and Safran stay on
The Direct — the “studio in limbo” reporting, the undated DC slate, and filmmakers struggling for answers during the sale
ScreenRant / Bleeding Cool — Ellison’s visit to the DC sets and EP Lars Winther’s comments, and Gunn’s contract running through 2027