CinemaCon 2026: New Footage Reveals an Isolated Peter Parker & MJ’s New Guy in “Spider‑Man: Brand New Day”
CinemaCon 2026, the annual convention for movie theater owners, is currently underway in Las Vegas, and Sony has already revealed a big piece of the puzzle from the eagerly anticipated fourth film in the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man franchise. In director Destin Daniel Cretton’s upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day (the most viewed trailer of all time), Peter Parker (Holland) is facing perhaps his greatest challenge yet; he’s got to face his next challenges without the people he loves most, all of whom he lost, one way or another, in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). It was in that film that a desperate Peter meddled with the multiverse and unleashed not only two additional Spider-Men (played by former web-slingers Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire), but a trio of classic villains. The situation was already teetering on the edge of multiverse collapse when Peter lost his beloved Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), who delivered the iconic line: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter was responsible for restoring balance to the multiverse, and to do so, he had to ensure everyone else he loved, including MJ (Zendaya), the love of his life, could never remember who he was. So Peter and his fellow Spider-Men saved the day, but he lost all his people in the process.
Brand New Day finds Peter Parker at an inflection point in his life, facing a new world in which MJ not only no longer remembers him but, thanks to footage revealed at CinemaCon, has a new guy. In the clip Sony revealed in Vegas, Peter finds out the hard way—he spies her kissing this guy at a party.
Holland was on hand virtually, via hologram, to tease the set-up: “Peter had to make a sacrifice to make all his friends forget who he is. Here, you’ll see some of the consequences of that choice.”
The sequence reveals Peter at a local bodega as Ned (Jacob Batalon) walks in to buy a keg. He does this without noticing Peter, his best friend in that former universe. Peter follows Ned to a proper college party (red solo cups, of course), and he notices that Ned keeps a kind of conspiracy board with headlines about Spider-Man.
“He actually saved me and my friend’s lives in high school,” Ned tells the random guy standing there (It’s Peter.) “Ever since, I’ve been trying to figure out who he is. Not to unmask him to the world, just to thank him. We know he’s definitely from Queens…I’ve been able to narrow it down to two prime suspects,” Ned says, before showing Peter photos of Flash Thompson and Professor Harrington. “If you knew who they were, it would really blow your mind.”
Enter MJ, who interrupts Ned’s narration of his detective work to comment on the size of their rager. “There’s like 50 people in our apartment,” she says. “Statistically speaking, it means at least two are sociopaths, which is cool.”
Peter then introduces himself to MJ. He tells her his name is “Maynard,” a neighbor from across the hall. He hands her a bouquet of flowers. To this, she replies, “friendly neighbor.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is set four years after the events of No Way Home. It finds Peter living alone after erasing his memory from those he loved and who loved him.
Here’s the official logline from Sony: “Crime-fighting in a New York that no longer knows his name, he’s devoted himself entirely to protecting his city — a full-time Spider-Man — but as the demands on him intensify, the pressure sparks a surprising physical evolution that threatens his existence, even as a strange new pattern of crimes gives rise to one of the most powerful threats he has ever faced.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives on July 31, 2026
Featured image: “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” official poster. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
