Venom 3 Milestone, Lowest-Grossing Venom Movie

Venom: The Last Dance has waltzed to the No. 1 spot at the box office three weeks in a row. The third and final installment in Sony’s Tom Hardy-fronted Venom series earned an additional $16.2 million through the weekend, taking first place over newcomers The Best Christmas Pageant Ever ($11.1 million) and Heretic ($11 million). Domestically, Venom 3 is now past the $100 million mark at $114.8 million, bringing its global cume to $394 million.

While the Sony-Marvel movie will eventually cross $400 million as it continues to play on just under 4,000 screens, the box office is lagging behind its predecessors: 2018’s Venom ($213 million domestic, $856 million worldwide) and 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($213 million domestic, $501 million worldwide). Following an $80 million opening (then the best October opening ever until it was surpassed by 2019’s Joker), the first Venom had earned $171 million domestically at this same point in time five years ago, and its 16-week run in North American theaters ended at $213.5 million.

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Venom 2, which opened mid-pandemic in 2021, had amassed $168 million by its third week, finishing just below its predecessor’s domestic total with $213.4 million after 17 weeks. Both films were relatively less expensive than your typical superhero movie at $100 million and $110 million, respectively, while Venom 3 cost a reported $120 million.

Venom is Sony’s eighth-highest grossing film of all time at the global box office, behind the Marvel Studios co-production Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.9 billion), the James Bond sequel Skyfall ($1.14 billion), Spider-Man: Far From Home ($1.13 billion), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($962 million), 2007’s Spider-Man 3 ($894 million), Spectre ($880.6 million), and Spider-Man: Homecoming ($880.1 million).

Red One, the expensive Dwayne Johnson-Chris Evans Christmas comedy from Amazon MGM, is expected to sleigh Venom 3 and take the No. 1 spot when it opens on Nov. 15 with a projected opening weekend between $20 million to $40 million. Also on the way this month: Gladiator II and Wicked, which will battle it out over the Nov. 22 weekend. Disney’s animated Moana 2 will sail into theaters over Thanksgiving with a projected massive $125 million-$135 million opening over the five-day holiday weekend.

Venom 3 opened to a franchise low $51 million in October, lower than Johnson’s DC movie Black Adam (which opened over the same weekend in 2022). That movie held a similar Rotten Tomatoes score (39% compared to 41%) and went on to finish its run with $390 million globally.

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The Venom 3 Rotten Tomatoes score was above average for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe — better than Venom (30%), Morbius (15%), and Madame Web (11%), only lower than Venom 2 (57%) — but indicates a case of diminishing returns for the SSU, which will release the R-rated Kraven the Hunter, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the Spider-Man villain, in December. Kraven will open one week before the family-friendly Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King, which will go head-to-head going into Christmas on Dec. 20.