Spider-Man held the box office for a fourth weekend

Spider-Man: Brand New Day has held the top of the North American box office for a fourth weekend.

Rentrak put the latest frame at about $39 million from just over 4,000 theatres. That was still well clear of Insidious: Out of the Further, which opened at about $25 million. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey stayed in the market too. Deadline, heading into the weekend, had forecast a 50 percent drop from the third frame, in line with Avengers: Endgame at the same stage. The hold was a little firmer than that.

The film is already in rare air. Deadline said it became the fastest picture to $800 million in North America, doing it in 19 days, and that global takings are past $2 billion. Sony can argue over the last rungs of the all-time list later. Four weekends at number one is the fact that still needs explaining.

India is a large part of that fact. Variety has now called Brand New Day the highest-grossing Hollywood film in the country, ahead of Avatar: The Way of Water. Trade tracker Sacnilk, via NDTV Profit, had the India gross at about Rs 575 crore by Saturday, with a fourth-Saturday take of Rs 3.70 crore. English still leads. Hindi, Tamil and Telugu prints have kept the evening shows alive. The film opened in India on 30 July, a day before the rest of the world.

A fourth weekend at number one is usually where the superhero film is meant to make room. This one has not.

The hold is about premium screens, dubbed prints, and people still buying tickets in week four. India is no longer a footnote in a Hollywood gross. It is one of the reasons the fourth weekend still looks like a first.

The comparison with Endgame only goes so far. Endgame was an ending. Brand New Day is a continuation that people are still showing up for.

Insidious will take some screens. New Indian films will take more. The test is whether the weekday hold in India stays in crores, and whether North America has one more weekend at the top before the slide looks ordinary.