Netflix‘s new movie series revival reaffirms what the biggest movie of 2026 is so far – and indeed, what movie could end up being the biggest movie of the year even by its end depending on how the rest of 2026 turns out. While the worlds of streaming and the cinema are often considered two entirely different realms, it’s undeniable that they still influence each other, and have a clear relationship as counterbalances of sorts.
While Netflix releases many of its own movies, for example, plenty of its biggest hits are films that first released in cinemas – and inversely, many major movie franchises are seemingly able to reach greater heights because the accessibility of streaming platforms like Netflix allows people to become fans of movie series and go to see new installments of franchises they might not have been able to otherwise.
The interesting dynamic between these two sides of the on-screen coin has had one excellent display in the past weeks, which goes some way to further highlight how the relationship between streaming and the cinema works for audiences via a major revival of one Netflix series on the platform.
Spider-Man: Homecoming & Spider-Man: Far From Home Getting Netflix Revivals Further Proves How Big Spider-Man: Brand New Day Is
Despite being 9 and 6 years old respectively – which is older than the majority of movies that tend to rest within Netflix’s newer most-watched lists – Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home are both on the most recent leaderboards for Netflix watch time globally.
As per Netflix’s own records, during August 3-August 9, Spider-Man: Far From Home was the platform’s third most-watched movie with an impressive 5,000,000 views, and Spider-Man: Homecoming was Netflix’s fourth most-watched, with 4,900,000 views – though interestingly, Homecoming did have a higher viewtime, looking at its 11,000,000 hours of viewtime vs Far From Home‘s 10,900,000 hours comparatively.
What is clear is that this is not a random act of fate, but rather the result of Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s theatrical release at the end of July, meaning that viewers either enjoyed Brand New Day so much they went back to rewatch the prior installments, or otherwise watched these previous chapters of Spider-Man’s MCU story in order to freshen up their memory before they went to watch or rewatch the new 2026 film in the cinema.
Homecoming & Far From Home Hitting The Netflix Charts Helps Explain Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s Box Office Success
The success of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home on Netflix and the box office success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day in theaters is, of course, a conjoined result.
Without several prior chapters of Spider-Man’s story in the MCU timeline being such hits with audiences and building up a steady belief in what the series was capable of, it’s unlikely that the new film would have leapt to such heights in quick fashion, and indeed Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s current $1.7 billion box office result (as per Box Office Mojo) is in no small part built on the backs of every major Spider-Man storyline the franchise established before then.
Inversely, though, the success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s own story retroactively makes the overall MCU Spider-Man series that much better and more enjoyable, giving audiences a fresh new reason to revisit these previous installments on platforms like Netflix, and enhancing the overarching narrative these films all work together over the course of almost a decade now to create.