Spider-Man's Six-Week Reign at the Box Office Is Finally Over — Dethroned by a Sequel Critics Hated
Practical Magic 2 opened to $30 million domestically, ending Spider-Man: Brand New Day's six-week run atop the US box office, while Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey quietly became Universal's highest-grossing film ever worldwide.
Six weeks is a genuinely rare run at the top of the box office. It took a critically panned sequel to finally end it.
Practical Magic 2, reuniting Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman under director Susanne Bier, knocked Spider-Man: Brand New Day off the top of the US box office chart this weekend, opening to a confirmed $30 million domestically. Combined with $16 million from 77 international markets, the film's worldwide debut totaled $46 million — enough to finally end Spider-Man's historic six-consecutive-weekend run at No. 1, a genuinely rare feat for any modern blockbuster.
The reception hasn't matched the opening numbers, though. Practical Magic 2 currently sits at just 34% on Rotten Tomatoes, roughly in line with the original 1998 film's 30% score, suggesting critics remain unconvinced by the long-awaited sequel despite its starry reunion cast. A solid B+ CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences offers a more encouraging signal, hinting word-of-mouth could help the film hold up better than critical consensus might suggest.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day, for its part, isn't fading quietly. The film added another $8.4 million domestically this weekend, pushing its US total to $936.6 million — keeping it firmly in second place on the all-time domestic chart, trailing only Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Elsewhere in the chart, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey quietly crossed a significant milestone in its ninth weekend, adding $7.4 million domestically to push its US total past $600 million — making it just the 18th film in history to reach that mark. More striking still, the film has now overtaken Jurassic World to become Universal Pictures' highest-grossing release ever worldwide, a genuinely massive achievement buried beneath this weekend's bigger headlines.
Rounding out the new releases, Angel Studios' action-comedy Runner, starring Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson, opened in fourth place domestically with $6.4 million, while Paul Greengrass's The Uprising debuted more modestly in eighth with $3.25 million.
For an industry that spent this summer watching Spider-Man rewrite record after record, this weekend offers a useful reminder: even historic box office runs eventually end — sometimes not to the movie everyone expected, but to whichever nostalgic sequel critics happened to dislike the least.
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