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Spider-Man: Brand New Day brought in $927m (£687m) of global ticket sales to make it the second-biggest opening weekend ever as it shot past its estimated $225m production budget.

The superhero movie – starring real-life husband and wife Tom Holland and Zendaya – is only behind Avengers: Endgame, which took in more than $1.2bn in its opening weekend in 2019.

Brand New Day also set a second-best North American record, with box office takings of $335m.

The film’s strong performance gives a much-needed boost for Disney ahead of the highly-anticipated December release of Avengers: Doomsday, after a string of Marvel movies under-performed in recent years.

Brand New Day, which opened in cinemas last week, picks up a few years after 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home as Peter Parker continues to fight crime in a world that has forgotten he is the masked superhero.

The latest instalment of the hugely popular franchise received largely positive reviews, with some calling it Holland’s best Spider-Man performance yet.

The film is Marvel’s last big-screen outing before Doomsday, the long-awaited culmination of multiple superhero story arcs after Avengers: Endgame.

Marvel films released since Endgame have struggled to attract the same broad audiences as they did at their peak.

Big budget films like The Marvels and The Thunderbolts recouped their production costs but were among the studio’s lowest-grossing films.

Spider-Man remains one of Marvel’s most lucrative franchises, with No Way Home making nearly $2bn in ticket sales.

Cinema attendance has slowed since the Covid-19 pandemic, which accelerated the shift to home-streaming options like Netflix.

But the big screen has staged something of a comeback this year, with the North American box office takings on track to pass $10bn for the first time since 2019.

That was helped by blockbuster hits by including Toy Story 5, Michael, and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – which have made more than $1bn each.

July releases Brand New Day and The Odyssey – director Christopher Nolan’s take on the epic Greek poem – are also on track to top the $1bn mark.

Indie horror flicks Obsession and Backrooms emerged as surprise successes, bringing in more than $390m each despite their modest budgets.

Oil prices dropped by more than $4 a barrel on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump refrained from launching a fresh attack on Iran and instead signalled a willingness to pursue a quick agreement aimed at ending Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Crude oil price on August 3

Brent crude futures fell $4.37, or 5%, to $83.56 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude declined $4.63, or 5.5%, to $80 a barrel.

The sharp decline followed a strong rally last month, when both contracts had gained more than 20% after fighting between the U.S. and Iran resumed. Concerns over attacks on several tankers near Oman also heightened security risks, discouraging shippers from entering the Gulf to load crude.

Also read: Trump’s closest Gulf allies are frustrated with his Iran war strategy: Report

In a possible sign of easing tensions, Trump said late on Saturday on his Truth Social platform that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had sought time to finalise an agreement that would result in “the Immediate, Complete and Total” reopening of the crucial waterway and bring “an end to Iran’s nuclear threat”. Trump added that he had agreed to cancel the attack to allow for a rapid agreement, and said Israel had also committed to the effort.

On Sunday, OPEC+ approved an increase of around 188,000 barrels per day in its oil production quota for September, marking the completion of the rollback of one tranche of its voluntary output cuts.
However, the additional supply has had little effect on the market so far. Export disruptions from the Gulf, along with supply issues involving Russia and Kazakhstan amid the Iran and Ukraine wars, have meant that the group’s successive monthly production hikes for most of this year have largely remained on paper.

Analysts hopeful?

The trajectory of oil prices will largely depend on the duration of the supply disruption. JPMorgan estimates that every additional month of disruption could lift Brent prices by about $7 to $8 a barrel. If the disruption extends for three months, the bank expects the monthly average Brent price to reach around $114 a barrel.Goldman Sachs has also warned that Brent could rise to $120 a barrel if shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transit route, continue. However, its base case remains that tensions in the Middle East will eventually ease.

Read more: Oil prices surge 20% in July as US-Iran war heightens Strait of Hormuz tensions

Based on that assumption, Goldman Sachs expects Brent to average $80 a barrel in the fourth quarter and $75 a barrel next year. Even so, the bank said the risks to its forecasts remain “tilted to the upside”, citing the possibility that shipping disruptions could continue in both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

“The direction of our outlook is unchanged; the path and the timeline have shifted. We still expect oil to cool as we move into 2027, for three reasons: supply outside the conflict zone is expanding, with OPEC+ raising production targets, the UAE at record output and non-OPEC barrels responding to price, said Anindya Bannerjee, Head of Commodity Research at Kotak Securities.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

Japan and the US have confirmed that they jointly intervened last week to halt a slide in the yen to a fresh 40-year low.

The joint intervention is the first since 2011, when both countries took coordinated action to weaken the yen after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit eastern Japan.

Both Japan’s finance ministry and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have said that they will not hesitate to conduct joint interventions in the future.

It highlights both countries’ efforts to prevent a sell-off in the yen and Japanese government bonds from having an impact on the global economy, including potentially helping to push up borrowing costs for Washington.

“The United States agreed to participate in the coordinated intervention because it serves its national interests by offering the prospect of significant benefits at a low cost,” Shigeto Nagai, head of Japan economics at Oxford Economics told the BBC.

The two countries are expected to continue to intervene “intermittently in a coordinated manner for some time”, he added.

“Even if the actual amount of intervention is not particularly large, the prolonged sense of vigilance regarding intervention will be effective in deterring speculators.”

The yen is historically weak mainly due to Japan having much lower central bank interest rates than other major economies like the US. That makes the Japanese currency less attractive to international investors.

The Bank of Japan last raised interest rates in June, as it increased its main rate to 1% – the highest level since September 1995. In comparison, the US Federal Reserve’s benchmark rate is in a range of 3.50% to 3.75%.

Japan also faces a decades-long slide in its working-age population, low productivity and a heavy reliance on energy imports that are priced in US dollars.

On Monday, Japan’s finance ministry said Friday’s intervention with the US Treasury Department “countered excessive volatility and disorderly movements in the Japanese yen in recent months”.

The “coordinated foreign exchange actions countered disorderly yen movements,” Bessent said in a social media post.

“We strongly support Japan’s decisive market and monetary steps to correct the substantial undervaluation of the yen,” he added.

“They have a weakening yen, and they wanted a little bit of help. And we’re always there for Japan,” US President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday.

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This article was written by

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.