• by Wayne Friedman , Today

The latest edition of Sony Pictures' big franchise movie title “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” soared to a massive $355 million in domestic box-office revenue -- for the second-biggest opening weekend ever, according to Comscore.

Walt Disney’s 2019 “Avengers: Endgame” still leads with $357.1 million for its domestic opening weekend.

Globally, “Brand New Day” took in $927 million -- also in second place to “Endgame” with its $1.2 billion worldwide opening.

The last action-adventure edition of the franchise “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021) had a domestic opening of $260.1 million.

Analysts have been concerned for some time that franchise superhero adventure movies are seeing mixed results with recent releases -- and that these films could be trending lower.

But "Brand New Day" results show that 18-24 moviegoers -- especially young men -- showed up for the latest “Spider-Man” film storyline, which got a boost from social media.

Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it a 90 score -- with a near perfect 96 result from audience/moviegoers.

Strong word-of-mouth marketing work did a lot of the heavy lifting -- seemingly allowing Sony Pictures to spend $3.6 million on national TV advertising, according to estimates from iSpot.tv -- with 890 airings, accounting for 505.5 million impressions.

Typical big-budget franchise movies can have a TV/media campaign between $20 million and $25 million for a full airing pre-release.

TV networks benefiting from Sony’s campaign included ESPN, NBC, Univision, ABC and CBS for shows including: “SportsCenter," “Today,” “Good Morning America,” “America’s Got Talent” and MLB Baseball.