Spider-Man: Brand New Day Opens Without IMAX — and The Odyssey Just Showed What That Costs
The biggest superhero release of the year arrives on Friday, and in most of the world you will not be able to watch it on an IMAX screen. That is not a rumour, a scheduling glitch or a last-minute change. It has been locked in since last autumn — and thanks to the film currently occupying those screens, we can finally put a number on what it means.
Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day playing in IMAX?
Not on opening weekend in most markets. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the first feature shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, holds an exclusive IMAX run from 17 July through roughly mid-August 2026. Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens 31 July, inside that window, so it launches on Dolby, ScreenX, 4DX and other premium screens instead.
Here is the part nobody has done yet. Every article about the Spider-Man Brand New Day IMAX situation was written in June or earlier, when The Odyssey was still an unknown quantity and “Spider-Man is missing IMAX” was a headline without arithmetic behind it. The Odyssey has now been in cinemas for ten days and has posted some of the most extreme premium-format numbers the industry has ever recorded. So let’s actually do the math. [internal link: The Odyssey box office breakdown]
What is actually happening with the screens
The mechanics are simpler than the coverage suggests.
IMAX operates a finite number of screens — a few hundred domestically, a similar number internationally. They cannot be duplicated, and unlike ordinary auditoriums a multiplex cannot simply add another one for a busy weekend. When two tentpoles want the same fortnight, one of them loses.
IMAX resolves that by prioritising films actually shot on its cameras, and The Odyssey is the most extreme case of that ever made: Nolan’s film is the first feature shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, using over two million feet of 70mm stock. IMAX’s own announcement set the exclusivity at a minimum of five weeks for its 70mm film locations and at least three weeks for the wider IMAX network, with trade reporting generally describing the hold as running from 17 July to around 14 August.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens on 31 July. That is week three. This has been known for months — the film was moved from 24 July to 31 July back in 2025, explicitly to put two weeks between itself and Nolan’s — and IMAX has confirmed the position directly. Speaking to Variety India, the company said plainly that it would not be playing Brand New Day in India, with ScreenX, Dolby and other premium formats substituting. A handful of international territories, including China, Japan and South Korea, are exceptions where the film does get IMAX. But the headline holds: on opening weekend, in most of the world, there is no Spider-Man Brand New Day IMAX option.
One clarification, since some coverage has drifted this way: there is no evidence of anything adversarial here. This is a scheduling commitment made a year in advance under IMAX’s standard practice of prioritising films shot on its cameras, not a studio manoeuvre aimed at a competitor.
Sony saw this coming — and moved anyway
It is worth clearing up a persistent misreading here. This was not a studio being caught out.
Brand New Day was originally slotted closer to the middle of July. Sony moved it back to 31 July in 2025, explicitly to open two weeks clear of Nolan’s film rather than land on top of it. That was a sound call on every axis except one: two weeks of distance solves the audience-overlap problem but does nothing about a screen commitment measured in month-long blocks.
So the studio traded a head-to-head weekend for a premium-screen shortage, and on the available evidence that was still the better of two bad options. Opening directly against a Nolan event picture — with the IMAX problem and a split audience and halved marketing oxygen — would have been considerably worse than opening clean two weeks later without one format.
There is also a structural asymmetry worth naming, and it contains a genuine irony. Universal is normally the shortest-window major studio, moving titles to premium video on demand in around a month. For The Odyssey it did the opposite, granting a theatrical exclusive of roughly four months before any PVOD release — mirroring what it did for Oppenheimer. Sony’s windows typically run around 45 days. The practical effect is that the later-released film is likely to reach home viewing first, which slightly reduces the value of any late-run IMAX pickup once those screens free up in August.
None of which changes what happens on Friday. But it does mean the framing of “Spider-Man lost IMAX” is slightly off. Sony chose the least costly of several genuinely bad calendar options, and the missing screens are the price of that choice rather than an accident.
What The Odyssey just proved IMAX is worth
This is where the story stops being a scheduling curiosity and becomes a box-office story.
The Odyssey opened on 17 July to $124.5 million domestically from 3,919 theatres and $264.1 million worldwide, with $139.6 million of that from 73 international markets. Worth being precise about the records, because a lot of coverage has overstated them: it is Christopher Nolan’s biggest worldwide opening, ahead of The Dark Knight Rises, but only his third-biggest domestic opening, behind both Dark Knight films. And it is Universal’s biggest R-rated opening — not the studio’s biggest opening outright, which remains Jurassic World.
Now the format split, drawn from IMAX’s own results announcement:
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Global IMAX opening weekend | $52 million |
| — Domestic IMAX | $29.6 million |
| — International IMAX | $22.2 million |
| IMAX share of global opening | ≈20% |
| Domestic IMAX screens | 444 (23.8% domestic market share) |
| International IMAX screens | 441, across 74 markets |
| IMAX 70mm locations worldwide | 41 |
| IMAX 70mm per-screen average | ≈$153,000 |
Read that fourth row again. 444 screens generated 23.8% of the film’s domestic gross. For context, the film was playing on nearly four thousand screens in total. Roughly one screen in nine produced almost a quarter of the money.
Widen it out and the picture is starker still. Counting all premium formats together, premium accounted for roughly 53% of The Odyssey’s domestic opening weekend gross — Boxoffice Pro’s breakdown put IMAX digital at 20%, non-Dolby premium large format at 20%, Dolby at 4%, IMAX 70mm at 3% and standard 70mm at 3%. More than half the money came off a minority of the screens. IMAX chief executive Rich Gelfond called the film part of “a rarified group of instant classic blockbusters in IMAX history.”
That is the film sitting on the screens Spider-Man cannot have.
So what is the missing IMAX actually costing Spider-Man?
Let’s be careful here, because this is where entertainment sites usually invent a number. We are going to build one openly instead, and you can disagree with the assumptions.
The Odyssey is not a fair comparison. Its IMAX share is inflated by three things that do not apply to Spider-Man: it was shot natively on IMAX cameras and marketed almost entirely on that fact, it carried a 70mm exclusive that turned individual screens into destinations, and its audience skews heavily toward the format-obsessed cinephile.
A more realistic baseline. We have real comparables for what IMAX delivers on an ordinary superhero launch, and they cluster in a fairly tight band. Deadpool & Wolverine took $19.1 million domestically in IMAX from a $211.4 million opening — 9.3%. The Fantastic Four: First Steps took around $16 million from a $117.6 million opening — roughly 13.6%. So call the working range 9–14% of domestic opening gross, not the 23.8% The Odyssey posted.
The arithmetic. If Brand New Day opens at the low end of current tracking — call it $180 million domestic — that band puts the missing IMAX contribution at roughly $16 million to $25 million of domestic opening-weekend gross, before any international IMAX. At the top of tracking the same percentages produce a larger absolute number, but the same conclusion.
Two things blunt it. First, demand does not evaporate; it redistributes. A moviegoer who wanted IMAX will mostly book Dolby or a PLF screen rather than stay home, so the true loss is the premium ticket premium on those seats, not the whole ticket. Second, IMAX screens should free up around mid-August, and a film with strong legs can pick up a meaningful late-run bump when they do.
What genuinely does not come back: opening-weekend spectacle. Superhero launches are event-driven, and IMAX is the single strongest event signal in exhibition. Losing it in week one and regaining it in week four is not a trade at par.
What you can actually book instead — including a format that has never existed
Sony’s answer to the IMAX problem is unusually interesting, and it is the most under-covered part of this story.
Shot for ScreenX. Brand New Day is the launch title for a brand-new premium large format from CJ 4DPlex. Standard ScreenX takes an existing film and extends selected scenes onto the side walls of the auditorium for a 270-degree effect. “Shot for ScreenX” means the side-wall imagery was captured on set during production rather than generated afterwards. Director Destin Daniel Cretton described the CJ 4DPlex team coming to set to shoot the footage that appears in the wings of the frame. ScreenX operates around 140 locations across the US and Canada, and CJ 4DPlex expects to roll the format out across roughly 20 to 30 tentpoles a year.
Whether it is better than IMAX is a matter of taste — peripheral width versus vertical scale are different pleasures. But it is genuinely new, and this is the first film to use it.
The full format list. Brand New Day is releasing across seven presentations:
- Standard — 1.90:1 on flat screens, 2.39:1 on scope
- IMAX — select international markets only, not the domestic opening
- Dolby Cinema — dual-laser projection with Dolby Atmos
- ScreenX — the 270-degree wraparound, in its new shot-for-format version
- 4DX — motion seats plus environmental effects
- D-Box — motion seating without the environmental effects
- Cinemark XD — Cinemark’s own large-format screen
Which to book. If picture and sound fidelity is what you want from a Spider-Man Brand New Day IMAX screening you can’t get, Dolby Cinema is the closest substitute and it is widely available. If you want the novelty and the thing this film was specifically made for, ScreenX. If you are bringing people who want an event rather than a presentation, 4DX. Cinemark XD is the reliable fallback where the others aren’t nearby. [internal link: premium cinema formats explained]
One more scheduling note worth knowing: Amazon Prime members get early screenings on 29 July, two days before the general release.
Where the tracking numbers actually sit
Projections for this film have been unusually wide, and it is worth understanding why before you read any single number as gospel.
Deadline’s three-week tracking put the domestic opening at $180–190 million. Boxoffice Pro’s long-range forecast, published a day later, went considerably higher at $230–250 million. Both are credible outlets; they simply weight presales, tracking surveys and comparable-title decay differently, and a fortnight out from release that spread is normal.
What is not in dispute is the presale performance. Brand New Day posted the best first-day presales of any film in roughly five years — the best since Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021.
For scale, here is the company it is keeping:
| Film | Domestic opening |
|---|---|
| Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) | $260.1M |
| Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) | $211.4M |
| Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) | $187.4M |
| Toy Story 5 (2026) | ~$160M |
| Spider-Man 3 (2007) | $151.1M |
| The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) | $117.6M |
| Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) | $117.0M |
| Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) | $92.5M |
At the low end of tracking it becomes the second-biggest Spider-Man opening ever and the biggest of 2026. At the high end it threatens No Way Home. Either way, the notion that missing IMAX would sink it was never serious.
What this actually says about cinemas in 2026
Step back from both films and there is a larger point here, and it is the reason this story matters beyond one opening weekend.
A premium screen is now the scarcest resource in exhibition. Not seats, not showtimes, not marketing — screens with a specific technology attached to them. The Odyssey’s numbers make the case unarguable: 444 domestic IMAX screens produced 23.8% of its domestic gross, and premium formats collectively produced around 53% of its opening weekend. The rest of the estate, thousands of ordinary auditoriums, produced slightly less than half the money.
That inverts how the business has traditionally thought about distribution. Screen count used to be the lever — get on more screens, make more money. Increasingly the lever is which screens, and there are only a few hundred of the ones that matter.
Two consequences follow, and both are visible in this specific collision. The first is that release-date strategy is now partly a screen-booking negotiation conducted a year or more in advance, which is why a film’s date can move for reasons that have nothing to do with the competitive landscape audiences can see. The second is that rival formats have an enormous commercial incentive to differentiate rather than imitate — which is precisely why CJ 4DPlex chose this particular film, on this particular weekend, to launch a format built around peripheral width rather than vertical scale. A summer where the biggest superhero release on the calendar cannot get IMAX is the single best launch window a competing format will ever be handed.
Watch whether that gamble pays. It is arguably a more consequential question than the opening number.
The strangest detail in the whole story
Tom Holland and Zendaya are in both films.
Holland plays Telemachus and Zendaya plays Athena in The Odyssey, alongside Matt Damon’s Odysseus, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron. Two weeks later the same two actors headline Brand New Day.
Which produces a genuinely unusual situation: the film blocking Spider-Man from IMAX stars Spider-Man. For a fortnight in July and August 2026, Holland and Zendaya are competing with themselves for the same premium screens, and whichever way audiences break, they are on the winning side of it.
What to watch on Monday morning
Four numbers will tell you how this went.
The domestic opening figure against the $180M floor. Clearing Deadline’s lower bound comfortably means the IMAX absence was immaterial. Landing under it means it wasn’t.
The premium-format share. The Odyssey ran at roughly 53% premium domestically, of which IMAX alone was 23 points. Whatever Brand New Day posts with IMAX removed from the mix is about as clean a natural experiment as exhibition ever produces.
ScreenX per-screen averages. Around 140 North American locations, a format making its debut. Strong per-screen numbers here would be a genuinely significant result for exhibition, not just for this film.
The Odyssey’s third weekend. It has beaten Oppenheimer’s pace by 62% while running effectively unopposed at the premium end. The first weekend it faces a direct competitor is the real test of those legs.
Key Takeaways
- Spider-Man Brand New Day IMAX screenings are not happening on opening weekend in most markets. The Odyssey holds the screens.
- The Odyssey’s IMAX exclusive runs from 17 July for a minimum of three weeks on the general IMAX network and five weeks on IMAX 70mm — trade reporting puts the practical end around 14 August.
- The Odyssey took $52 million globally in IMAX alone on its opening weekend, about 20% of its $264.1 million global debut. Premium formats overall were roughly 53% of its domestic opening.
- 444 domestic IMAX screens delivered 23.8% of The Odyssey’s domestic gross. That is the scale of the screen estate Spider-Man is going without.
- Benchmarked against normal superhero launches — Deadpool & Wolverine at 9.3% IMAX, Fantastic Four: First Steps at about 13.6% — the missing Spider-Man Brand New Day IMAX screens plausibly cost $16–25 million of domestic opening weekend. Significant, but softened because demand redistributes to Dolby and PLF rather than disappearing.
- Spider-Man launches the new “Shot for ScreenX” format from CJ 4DPlex, across roughly 140 North American locations, and releases in seven presentations in total.
- Tracking spans $180–190 million (Deadline) to $230–250 million (Boxoffice Pro). Presales were the strongest in about five years.
- Tom Holland and Zendaya appear in both films.
FAQ
Q: Is Spider-Man: Brand New Day in IMAX? A: Not on opening weekend in most markets. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey holds an exclusive IMAX run from 17 July for a minimum of three weeks on the general IMAX network and five on IMAX 70mm, with trade reporting putting the practical end around 14 August. Spider-Man opens 31 July, inside that window. China, Japan and South Korea are exceptions where the film does play IMAX.
Q: Why won’t Spider-Man: Brand New Day play in IMAX? A: IMAX has a finite number of screens and prioritises films shot on its own cameras. The Odyssey is the first feature shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, using over two million feet of 70mm stock, which earned it an extended exclusive window that Spider-Man’s 31 July release date falls inside.
Q: What formats is Spider-Man: Brand New Day releasing in? A: Seven — standard, Dolby Cinema, ScreenX, 4DX, D-Box, Cinemark XD, and IMAX in select international markets only. It is also the launch title for “Shot for ScreenX”, a new CJ 4DPlex format where the side-wall imagery was filmed on set rather than added afterwards.