Venom: The Last Dance showed less bite than expected at the North American box office, collecting US$51 million (S$69 million) in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday (Oct 27), significantly down from the alien symbiote franchise’s previous entries.
Projections for the third Venom film from Sony Pictures had been closer to US$65 million. More concerning, though, was the drop off from the first two Venom films. The 2018 original debuted with US$80.2 million, while the 2021 follow-up,“Venom: Let There Be Carnage, opened with US$90 million even as theatres were still in recovery mode during the pandemic.
The Last Dance, starring Tom Hardy as a journalist who shares his body with an alien entity also voiced by Hardy, could still turn a profit for Sony. Its production budget, not accounting for promotion and marketing, was about US$120 million – significantly less than most comic-book films.
But The Last Dance is also performing better overseas. Internationally, Venom: The Last Dance collected US$124 million over the weekend, including US$46 million over five days of release in China. That’s good enough for one of the best international weekends of the year for a Hollywood release.
Still, neither reviews (36 per cent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) nor audience scores (a franchise-low “B-” CinemaScore) have been good for the film scripted by Kelly Marcel and Hardy, and directed by Marcel.
The low weekend for Venom: The Last Dance also likely insures that superhero films will see their lowest-grossing year in a dozen years, not counting the pandemic year of 2020, according to David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment.
Following on the heels of the Joker: Folie à Deux flop, Gross estimates that 2024 superhero films will gross about US$2.25 billion worldwide. The only upcoming entry is Marvel’s Kraven The Hunter, due out Dec. 13. Even with the US$1.3 billion of Deadpool & Wolverine, the genre hasn’t, overall, been dominating the way it once did. In 2018, for example, superhero films accounted for more than US$7 billion in global ticket sales.
Last week’s top film, the Paramount Pictures horror sequel Smile 2, dropped to second place with US$9.4 million. That brings its two-week total to US$83.7 million worldwide.
The weekend’s biggest success story might have been Conclave, the papal thriller starring Ralph Fiennes and directed by Edward Berger (All Quiet On The Western Front). The Focus Features release, a major Oscar contender, launched with US$6.5 million in 1,753 theatres.
That put Conclave into third place, making it the rare adult-oriented drama to make a mark theatrically. Some 77 per cent of ticket buyers were over the age of 35, Focus said. With a strong opening and stellar reviews, “Conclave” could continue to gather momentum both with moviegoers and Oscar voters.
