Tom Holland and Zendaya are having the kind of summer most actors only dream about, and the Spider-Man stars are their own toughest competition at the box office.
The actors, who recently married, both appear in Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey and Marvel blockbuster Spider-Man: Brand New Day, released just a fortnight apart.
The Odyssey topped the domestic box office for two weeks after opening on July 17. Spider-Man: Brand New Day then opened to an estimated $355 million in North America and $927 million globally — the second-biggest opening weekend in box office history behind Avengers: Endgame — taking the top spot at the weekend box office from The Odyssey.
Together, Brand New Day and The Odyssey helped power the biggest overall weekend in U.S. box office history, with $434 million in ticket sales across all films. Variety described Brand New Day’s debut as “mind-blowing,” while Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige called the figures “truly phenomenal.”
Brand New Day, the fourth solo Spider-Man movie starring Holland and Zendaya, didn’t have all the advantages. It opened without IMAX screens because The Odyssey held IMAX’s entire global footprint for a three-week exclusive run. Instead, Spider-Man leaned on other premium large-format screens — and still set opening-weekend records for Dolby, 4DX and ScreenX.
The Odyssey, meanwhile, has now made $911 million worldwide after three weekends. One Holland and Zendaya blockbuster, in other words, was boxing the other out of the most lucrative theaters — and both became massive hits anyway.
The collision almost didn’t happen. When Nolan offered Holland the role of Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, both movies were set to begin filming the same day. Holland said he called Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman for what he described to GQ as a “very uncomfortable conversation,” asking that the Spider-Man shoot be pushed so he could make Nolan’s film first.
He had encouragement at home. Holland told People that Zendaya, who plays the goddess Athena in The Odyssey, gave him a playful ultimatum: “I’ll leave you if you don’t do The Odyssey.” Nolan, nearby during the interview, replied, “Well, thank you to her.”
Sony agreed to move Brand New Day, a delay Holland later credited with improving the film, since the extra time let the production hire Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and develop the script. “The Odyssey almost saved Spider-Man because we wouldn’t have had Destin,” Holland said.
The result is a first. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Holland and Zendaya are the first married couple to headline two major summer releases weeks apart.