‘Brand New Day’ Has Sold 75 Million Tickets. ‘Titanic’ Sold 137 Million, and ‘The Force Awakens’ 108 Million

In France, their box-office system isn’t just about the amount of money a movie has made, but rather the number of tickets sold — which is something that just isn’t done in the U.S. Maybe it should be.

A New York Times report tackles the topic as “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” inches ever so close to surpassing “The Force Awakens” as the highest-grossing domestic release of all time. It’s currently at $923 million, only $13 million short of “The Force Awakens’” $936 million record.

A few weeks ago, when “Brand New Day” surpassed “Titanic” on the all-time charts, it felt off. “Titanic” was everywhere. Your friends saw it. Their parents saw it. Your grandma saw it. Everyone had an opinion about it. People quoted it. “My Heart Will Go On” was absolutely unavoidable. That’s the part these modern Marvel mega-hits can’t really replicate. They can make an insane amount of money, but — due to inflation — they don’t necessarily feel like cultural events in the same way. “Titanic” wasn’t just a blockbuster. It felt like everyone on Earth had seen it.

Let’s crunch the numbers. “Brand New Day,” which will become the all-time box-office champ by the weekend, has so far sold around 75 million tickets. “The Force Awakens,” released 11 years ago, sold 110 million tickets. That’s 35 million fewer. An astounding difference. Meanwhile, “Titanic” sold an estimated 137 million domestic tickets while grossing $674 million, when tickets averaged roughly $4.50–$5 — today, the average is around $12. In other words, “Brand New Day” can approach the modern box-office record while selling roughly 45% fewer tickets than “Titanic” and about 32% fewer than “The Force Awakens.”

Due to inflation, raw box-office dollars no longer tell us nearly as much about how many people actually saw a movie.

There’s no doubting that ‘Brand New Day’ is an extraordinary box-office success, but comparing it with “Titanic” also shows what the phrase “cultural phenomenon” really means. “Titanic” didn’t simply generate enormous revenue; it became unavoidable. In an increasingly fragmented culture, where audiences are divided across streaming services, social platforms and countless online communities, a movie becoming genuinely universal — something that feels like everyone has seen it, heard of it or has an opinion about it — may now be much harder to attain.

So the media will, of course, insert an asterisk next to “Brand New Day” when it reaches the record, either Saturday or Sunday. I will also acknowledge that it will never achieve “Titanic’s” broader cultural impact, which looks even more extraordinary in retrospect.

For sheer cultural impact, nothing will likely beat “Gone With the Wind,” which sold a remarkable 202 million tickets in 1939 — and that’s when the U.S. population was just 130 million.