Labor Day weekend is shaping up to be another major chapter in the 2026 theatrical box office, with Spider-Man: Brand New Day closing in on the all-time domestic record while Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has crossed the $1 billion mark internationally. The two films are following very different paths to blockbuster status, but both are now within striking distance of significant box-office milestones.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is projected to collect around $21 million over the four-day Labor Day weekend, which would take its domestic total to approximately $921 million by Monday. That would leave the film less than $16 million behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which currently holds the domestic record at $936.6 million.
The film has already crossed another major threshold. Brand New Day became only the second movie ever to pass $900 million domestically, reaching the milestone in just 36 days. That pace is faster than The Force Awakens, which took 50 days to reach $900 million. Current box-office tracking puts Brand New Day at roughly $898-$900 million domestically, with its worldwide haul standing at more than $2.3 billion.
The Labor Day projections would give the superhero blockbuster another strong holiday frame after it has spent five consecutive weekends at No. 1. The film is playing in approximately 3,520 theaters and continues to benefit from premium large-format screens, helping it maintain a sizeable presence even this deep into its theatrical run.
If the projected holiday total holds, Brand New Day will enter the final stretch of its domestic run with the Force Awakens record firmly in sight. The remaining gap is small enough that the question is no longer whether the film can approach the record, but whether it can generate enough business in the weeks ahead to actually overtake it.
Destin Daniel Cretton, meanwhile, has another connection to the Labor Day record. His Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings still holds the record for the biggest Labor Day opening, with $94.6 million over the four-day holiday in 2021.
While Spider-Man is pursuing a domestic record, The Odyssey has reached a milestone on the international front. The Nolan epic has now crossed $1.014 billion internationally, making it only the 17th film ever to reach $1 billion in overseas markets. More significantly, it is the first Hollywood movie that is neither a sequel nor a remake to reach the $1 billion international mark since James Cameron’s Avatar in 2009.
With its international haul combined with its North American performance, The Odyssey has reached approximately $1.59 billion worldwide. The film is also heading into its eighth weekend with a projected four-day Labor Day haul of around $15.2 million, potentially taking its domestic total close to $587 million.
That leaves Nolan’s epic with more targets ahead. The Odyssey could potentially challenge Jurassic World, which finished with approximately $653.4 million domestically and $1.67 billion worldwide, for Universal’s major theatrical benchmarks. The film has already become Nolan’s highest-grossing movie, surpassing the lifetime totals of The Dark Knight Rises and The Dark Knight.
Its premium-format performance has also become a story in its own right. The Odyssey has generated more than $457 million worldwide from IMAX screenings, making it the highest-grossing IMAX release, while select 70mm IMAX engagements have been extended into September.
Behind the two dominant titles, Coyote vs. Acme is projected to take approximately $12-$13 million over the four-day weekend, following a $15.5 million three-day opening. The film has also benefited from strong audience response, including an A CinemaScore and a 95% Rotten Tomatoes audience score reported during its opening weekend.
Disney and Pixar’s 20th-anniversary rerelease of Cars is targeting around $8 million over four days, while By Any Means is projected at approximately $8 million. Insidious: Out of the Further is looking at around $7 million, with Onslaught and Fall 2: Deadpoint further down the holiday chart.
The broader picture makes these performances even more significant. The 2026 summer domestic box office generated approximately $4.6 billion, up about 26% from the previous year, making it the strongest summer since 2013 according to the Associated Press. Reuters similarly reported a $4.6 billion summer and noted expectations that the full-year domestic market could cross $10 billion.
At the center of that recovery are two very different theatrical models. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is demonstrating the enduring power of a major franchise, while The Odyssey is showing that a filmmaker-driven original adaptation can also command enormous global audiences without being a sequel or remake.
As Labor Day weekend unfolds, both films therefore have something much larger at stake than another strong weekend. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is within touching distance of the domestic record, while The Odyssey has already entered the small group of films to generate more than $1 billion internationally. Their next few weeks will determine just how far these two extraordinary theatrical runs can go.