Sony Pictures is flying high after Spider-Man: Brand New Day, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, swung into the record books with its spectacular opening weekend at the box office.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton s film launched to $360 million domestically, leaping past 2019's Avengers: Endgame for the biggest North American debut ever. Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal and Mark Ruffalo also star in Brand New Day, which focuses on the title Marvel superhero's lonely life as he sets out to stop an invisible new foe.

In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman admits that there have yet to be significant talks about Holland returning as Spider-Man for a fifth film:  No, not in any concrete sense - only aspirational.  In light of Holland having told THR at the Brand New Day premiere that he would be open to reprising his role, Rothman says,  I can tell you when I heard that Tom said that, I jumped for joy. All I will say is that hope springs eternal. I really hope so. 

He also quips,  All the geniuses who said that theatrical movies were dead, they're not necessarily right. Actually, the theatrical marketplace is booming right now, and I'm excited about it. So I'm very optimistic. 

Kevin Hart (left), Karen Gillan, Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black star in Jumanji: Open World Hiram Garcia/Sony Pictures

The exec sees the nearly five-year gap since 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home - which marked the previous feature to star Holland as the web-slinger - as having created a sense of scarcity that built excitement for Brand New Day. Rothman also recalls the filmmaking team feeling a sense of uncertainty at first about how to follow No Way Home, which created buzz with the return of past Peter Parkers in Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield before collecting a global total of $1.9 billion.

 [Initially,] the problem for a while was,  How do you top that?'  he says.  What do we do next when we just put in all our Spider-Men? The strategic decision was - rather than trying what we all thought would be perhaps an empty effort of going quote, unquote bigger - we just went deeper. T

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