‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Spins Up Massive Numbers for Sony’s Quarterly Earnings

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Blockbuster “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” delivered a major boost to Sony’s September quarterly earnings on the top and bottom lines.

Sony Pictures Entertainment, for the three months ended Sept. 30, reported sales up 37% to $3.23 billion and operating income of $581 million — a year-over-year increase of 527% and an all-time record for operating income in a September quarter. The results were largely driven by the box-office success of “Brand New Day.”

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“This was record high operating income for the second quarter,” Sony CFO Lin Tao said of the Pictures segment.

Sony now expects Pictures to post full-year operating income of 200 billion yen ($1.26 billion), one-third higher than the 150 billion yen ($942 million) it guided in July. It also lifted the segment’s sales forecast to 1.76 trillion yen ($11 billion), crediting the theatrical run of “Brand New Day.”

SPE’s theatrical revenue for the September quarter came in at a whopping $1.28 billion, an 11-fold increase from the year-earlier period, thanks mostly to “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” alongside the performance of horror movies “Insidious: Out of the Further” and “Resident Evil.” Television productions segment revenue dropped 31% year over year, to $483 million.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” which opened wide July 31, became the third-highest grossing movie in history with a haul of $2.52 billion at the global box office this summer (behind the original “Avatar” and Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame”).

The movie, starring Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Zendaya as MJ, is “not so much a superhero film, but ‘super-person’ film,” Tom Rothman, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, said during a convo with Variety’s Cynthia Littleton at France’s Lumière Summit in September. “It’s very human. It’s very emotional. It’s got plenty of whiz-bang, but that’s not what the secret is. The secret is it’s a relatable story that almost everybody has related to.”

By the end of September, “Brand New Day” had earned $952 million in North America and $1.55 billion internationally. “Insidious: Out of the Further” stood at $168 million worldwide. “Resident Evil” had taken $111 million in North America after 13 days in release, plus $92 million from the international territories where Sony holds rights.

Other parts of the studio softened. Revenue from licensing films to streaming services fell to $186 million from $237 million, and home entertainment slipped from $126 million to $98 million. Media Networks, which includes the studio’s TV channels and Crunchyroll, dipped from $913 million to $896 million.

Overall for the September quarter, Sony’s Q2 of fiscal year 2026, the company reported revenue of 3.429 trillion yen ($21.5 billion), up 10%, and net income of 450 billion yen ($2.8 billion), up 44%. A weaker yen flattered the quarter: Excluding currency effects, group sales grew about 4%.

Sony also raised its groupwide outlook. It now expects full-year sales of 13 trillion yen ($81.6 billion), operating income of 1.87 trillion yen ($11.7 billion) and net income of 1.33 trillion yen ($8.35 billion), all above its July forecast.

The Japanese electronics and media conglomerate also saw strong gains in its games division. Revenue for the September quarter rose 9%, to 1.208 trillion yen ($7.6 billion), on higher network services sales and first- and third-party game title sales partially offset by a drop in PlayStation hardware sales. Sony reported 2.6 million PS5 unit sales in the period vs. 4.0 million in the year-prior quarter. PlayStation monthly active users at the end of the quarter were 127 million, up 2 million sequentially.

Sony’s Game & Network Services segment operating income jumped 83%, to 220 billion yen ($1.4 billion). A key reason for the gain was that in the year-ago quarter, it recorded 31.5 billion yen in impairment losses against a portion of game studio Bungie’s intangible and other assets and 18.3 billion yen in expenses “resulting from a correction in the amount of certain previously capitalized development costs.”

Video-game “Marvel’s Wolverine,” which launched Sept. 15, had sold through 2.4 million units as of Nov. 4. Sony raised the segment’s full-year operating income forecast to 700 billion yen ($4.39 billion) from 660 billion yen ($4.14 billion). It made the increase despite a change in the release date of one of its own titles, which it expects to weigh on first-party software sales.

In the company’s music segment, sales for the September 2026 quarter rose 10% to 598.4 billion yen, driven by higher revenue from live events, merchandising and streaming services. Operating income increased 6% to 122.8 billion yen.

Most of the gain in music operating income came from streaming and favorable currency. Sony lifted the segment’s full-year forecast to 2.3 trillion yen ($14.4 billion) in sales and 445 billion yen ($2.79 billion) in operating income. Ateez’s “Golden Hour: Part.5” was Sony Music Entertainment’s top project by revenue for the quarter, ahead of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Ella Langley’s “Dandelion.” Nogizaka46’s “Zehinioyobazu” led Sony Music Entertainment (Japan).

Visual Media & Platform, the Music unit that covers anime and game applications, fell to 90.4 billion yen ($567 million) in sales from 105.9 billion yen ($665 million). The year-earlier quarter had been boosted by “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle,” which Sony Pictures and Crunchyroll released in North America in September 2025.

In July, a Sony Music subsidiary paid 256.4 billion yen ($1.61 billion) in cash for a company holding music catalogs and other assets, adding 542.7 billion yen ($3.41 billion) of catalog to Sony’s books.

The currency conversion rate Sony used in reporting earnings was $1 U.S. to 159.3 yen.

The studio’s slate continues with “Ramayana,” dated for U.S. release on Nov. 5 through Sony Pictures Releasing International. After that come “Ghost Soldier” on Nov. 11 and “Jumanji: Open World” on Dec. 25. In 2027, Crunchyroll’s “Witch on the Holy Night” follows on Jan. 29, then “The Legend of Zelda” on April 30 and “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse” on June 18.

“We believe that this strong performance was achieved through the symbiotic combination of stable growth in our distribution platforms, including PlayStation Network and Crunchyroll, and hit content driven by our strong IP and creative talent, such as Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Ella Langley,” Tao said on the earnings call.