Spider-Man: Brand New Day set a preview record of $72 million, surpassing Avengers: Endgame. Then someone leaked the whole film online.
According to a report by Variety, a bootleg version of the film was posted by an account under the name Frederick Bryan and reached 5.9 million accounts before being taken down nine hours after it first appeared. The post collected over 143,000 likes and 10,000 reshares in that window. Other accounts downloaded and reposted the copy, but those versions were removed quickly as well. Sony has not commented on the situation.
The Brand New Day leak was not the first major film to be hit this summer. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, which also stars Tom Holland and Zendaya, was leaked earlier and reached 2.1 million views within two and a half hours before being pulled. Universal responded after that incident. "We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols. We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights," the studio told Variety.
Despite both leaks circulating widely across social media, neither film appears to have suffered at the box office. Brand New Day's $72 million in previews alone set a new record, surpassing Endgame's previous benchmark for the same measure. The Odyssey is also described as breaking records, though specific preview figures were not provided.
The $72 million preview number for Brand New Day is a striking data point on its own. Avengers: Endgame, released in 2019, had held the record and is widely considered one of the highest-grossing films in cinema history. The fact that a Spider-Man solo film exceeded it in previews alone signals the scale of audience anticipation heading into opening weekend.
Spider-Man has been a cornerstone of popular culture since Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko created the character in 1962. The character first appeared in the final issue of the anthology comic Amazing Fantasy #15. What began as a concept initially rejected for featuring a teenage hero with everyday struggles became a major bestseller and eventually one of the most commercially valuable properties in entertainment.
Brand New Day's opening weekend figures had not yet been reported at the time of publication.
