Spider-Man took more in one weekend than Australian films took in six months

Spider-Man: Brand New Day took $30.43 million in its opening weekend in Australian cinemas.

Australian films took $17.1 million between January and June.

That is the half-year return for local titles on Numero data, per analyses published in July by IF Magazine and by the Australia In Cinemas newsletter. The two counts of Australian releases differ: 35 in IF’s analysis, 41 in the newsletter’s. The dollar figure does not.

A record half for cinemas

The wider market is having its strongest run in years.

April, May and June each cleared $100 million at the national box office. It is the first time the market has recorded three consecutive $100 million months, per Numero figures reported by Mediaweek and Variety Australia on 3 July. Admissions for the first half were up 16 per cent on the same period of 2025, on Numero and CineTAM data.

Guy Burbidge, managing director of Val Morgan Cinema, called the run ‘a landmark achievement’.

It has kept going. Spider-Man: Brand New Day posted the second-biggest opening weekend recorded in Australia and stood at $69.30 million after three weekends, per Variety Australia. The Odyssey was at $52.8 million after five. Toy Story 5 had reached $46 million.

The arithmetic is simple. April to June took more than $300 million. The local total for the full six months is less than 6 per cent of that quarter alone.

Where the local money came from

Two titles.

Mortal Kombat II, released by Warner Bros., took $5.07 million. EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, released by Universal, took $4.24 million. Together, $9.31 million. That is more than half the local total, from two films carried by Hollywood studios.

The other 39 titles on the newsletter’s count took $7.84 million between them.

Mortal Kombat II is directed by Simon McQuoid, returning from the 2021 original. It opened third on the weekend of 7 to 10 May with $2.17 million, behind The Devil Wears Prada 2 in its second week. EPiC is Baz Luhrmann’s. IF Magazine reports it is the second-highest-grossing local film of the year and the second-highest-grossing Australian documentary on record, excluding IMAX titles.

The rest of the list

Among titles without a studio distributor, three films did most of the work: The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act at $2.39 million, The Pout-Pout Fish at $1.73 million and Leviticus at $983,000. On the newsletter’s analysis, those three accounted for 73 per cent of non-studio fiction takings.

Twenty-one of the 39 non-studio titles earned less than $50,000 each. Combined, they took $403,300.

The median non-studio fiction feature took $71,220. The median non-studio documentary took $29,760.

The read from here

Cinemas are not the constraint. Admissions are up 16 per cent. The market has just recorded three $100 million months in a row. The audience is in the building.

It is not buying tickets to Australian films in any volume unless a studio is distributing them. Strip out the two studio titles and the local half-year figure is $7.84 million across 39 films.

The median is the number to watch in the second-half return. A record half for Australian cinemas has not been a record half for Australian films. The full-year figures will show whether that gap narrows, or whether a single August weekend was the more accurate measure.