After years of disappointing releases, Marvel has found the winning formula to their success: the return to one of their most beloved characters

By Cillian Howley | Sep 11 2026

It’s a brand new day for Marvel Studios. The latest Spider-Man flick swung past two billion at the box office in a mere seventeen days. That is hundreds of millions more than their last three entries managed in their combined lifetime grosses. The Tom Holland-starrer has not just made a mint for executives at Marvel and Sony but renewed interest in the franchise amongst general audiences. At showings for Brand New Day, cinemagoers were packed like sardines, so much so they were leaving in floods of sweat as well as tears. But can one blockbuster hit really turn this ship that has been gradually sinking since, if we’re being honest, Endgame?

Following the 2019 climax of a decade-long saga, Marvel lost steam with viewers and rarely picks it back up. The successes of Deadpool & Wolverine and No Way Home are outliers in the studio’s post-Covid output. Both films cashed in on nostalgia bait to create monster cinema events. The birth of Disney+, a global pandemic and a directionless universe created the perfect storm for the franchise to flail. Recent tepidly received attempts at introducing new teams: Fantastic Four and Thunderbolts* indicate a close-mindedness from fans. Even the desperate post-release subtitle of *The New Avengers could not save a movie severely lacking in actual superheroes. In 2025, Marvel had the rare dishonour of being beaten by DC who nabbed the highest grossing superhero film of the year with James Gunn’s Superman.

The friendly neighbourhood hero was unfettered by this summer’s Supergirl and reasserted Marvel at the top of the food chain. Tom Holland and Marvel clearly need each other; they rarely, if ever, succeed without the other. Given his barely serviceable turn in The Odyssey, I’m happy for Holland’s sake he still has Spidey. Acting alongside big leagues like Anne Hathaway and Robert Pattinson must have rubbed off on the English actor who is seemingly experimenting with a New York inflection in the first ten minutes of Brand New Day. He quickly reverts to the standard, nonspecific American accent similarly adopted by many of his fellow compatriots.

What he lacks in proficiency, he has certainly made up for in dollar signs. It doesn’t hurt that the film stars two parts of the most famous celebrity couple this decade. The real key to Spider-Man’s unending success is its mostly contained story that doesn’t require months of Disney+ viewing to understand. The series reliably delivers two hours of uncomplicated thrills with emotionally invested characters and minimal cheap Marvel shticks.

The unveiling of the X-Men reboot cast set the internet abuzz in a manner reminiscent of peak Marvel-mania. The buzziest young stars joined Brand New Day’s Sadie Sink. Heartstopper’s Kit Connor, Obsession newcomer Inde Navarrette and stage actress Maya Boyd round out the mutant team. The star wattage is undeniable, albeit Kevin Feige apparently looked no further than the Netflix homepage. It's clear that Marvel is targeting an audience younger than their Millennial diehards. The cast is made up of supremely talented individuals but will they work well together? Sink let it slip that she had not met her new castmates yet. Observant fans noted this meant there was no chemistry read which may hurt the 2028 film- which will no doubt heavily feature some superhero-type teamwork. Hasty decisions bear rotten fruit. After all, the Fantastic Four cast seemed like a homerun on paper.

Spider- Verse leaks have also hit the web. Ironically, that’s not a good thing for Miles Morales nor the team involved in what must be an arduous process. The upcoming third film was initially set for a likely impossible 2024 release date. Four minutes of the film, now slated for next year, are online. According to co-writer Christopher Miller, the footage is “unfinished [and] not fully rendered.” It's a harsh blow for Sony but set leaks from No Way Home only bolstered fan anticipation. Every cloud.

Amidst the haze of Brand New Day’s fresh glory, it’s very easy to predict clear skies ahead for Marvel. Spider-Man is strong but not enough to drag an entire shared universe out of the red.

It's tacky to boil a film’s success down to profitability but Doomsday will need to break records to make returns on investment. Dragging Downey and Evans back is indicative of creatively bankrupt boardroom decisions that may not even hold up financially. The pair received well-earned sendoffs over a decade ago that clearly enough zeroes can undo. Is Marvel really going to retread the same tired ground ad infinitum? If X-Men’s new, young cast excites audiences, old Avengers might do the opposite.