Spider-Man: Brand New Day has already passed $1 billion in ticket sales, and it is now on pace to become just the eighth film to reach $2 billion worldwide. For Tom Holland, that puts a box-office milestone next to a more unusual question: whether the scale of his biggest crowd-pleaser can help him in the awards race for The Odyssey.
The timing matters because the Marvel movie is still moving through cinemas with the biggest all-time opening weekend domestically behind it, and it is now tracking toward the top-grossing Hollywood release since 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water. That makes Holland a rare case of a star whose most bankable role and most awards-friendly role are arriving at the same time, with Peter Parker at the center of one conversation and Telemachus in The Odyssey at the center of the other.
The numbers are already unusual enough on their own. Brand New Day became the second-fastest film to reach $1 billion, and its run is being compared with a tiny club of global blockbusters that includes Ne Zha 2, which grossed $2.27 billion last year. If the current pace holds, the film will join only a handful of titles ever to cross $2 billion, a level that all but guarantees it remains one of the defining releases of the year.
That scale does not make it an awards player. The movie is extremely unlikely to contend in the marquee Oscar categories, and its success does not change that basic fact. But it can still matter for Holland. In the current awards season, he sits at No. 11 in Gold Derby predictions for his work in The Odyssey, which is already expected to land in the Best Picture field and has a navigable path to tying Sinners' nomination record of 16.
That is where the friction comes in. Some critics considered Holland a weak link in The Odyssey reviews, even as others extolled his work as the embattled son of Odysseus trying to prove himself worthy of his father while attempting to protect his mother from ill-intentioned suitors. The commercial force of Brand New Day could help put him over the top for an acting nomination, but it cannot erase the fact that his Oscar case still rests on whether voters respond to the performance itself.
For now, the box-office story is clear and the awards question is still open. Brand New Day has given Holland a headline-grabbing commercial victory, and if The Odyssey gains traction with Oscar voters, this week’s billion-dollar run may be remembered as the boost that helped turn a near miss into a nomination.
