Venom: The Last Dance Disappoints At This Weekend’s Box Office

For the third frame in a row, the overall box office was down from last year, and the third part of Sony’s Venom: The Last Dance trilogy didn’t reach the highs of the first two parts of the franchise.

Venom: The Last Dance Down From First Two Of Threequel

Taking $51M domestically on 4,131 screens and $175M globally this weekend at the box office, Marvel’s Venom: The Last Dance was the biggest October opener of 2024 but marked the weakest opening performance in the trilogy, whose, respectively.

The Venom franchise now stands at $1.5B worldwide with the previous two entries debuting at $80.2M and $90M respectively.

Other low-grossing films in the genre included Marvel’s Ant-Man at $57.2M and The Incredible Hulk at $55.4M. DC’s The Flash took $55M and Shazam! $53.5M in their opening weekends.

Shazam!’s relatively lower budget in the $90M-$100M range is similar to the cost per movie in the Venom franchise. Given its B-movie nature, the Rotten Tomatoes of 36% compared to 30% and 57% for the previous two is unsurprising.

Moviegoers’ feelings seem to be ambivalent about the Sony Marvel tapestry, now mostly controlled by Disney.

Several peripheral characters may have future possibilities although some fans wonder if there is any real interest in the future of such obscure, bottom-of-the-barrel comics. While Spider-Man is an A character, Venom is a solid B. Mention someone like Knull to most 12-year-old boys and you’ll get a blank stare.

Within the larger Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) Multiverse Saga factors such as a Tom Hardy/Tom Holland matchup play a big role.

Spider-Man doesn’t even get a mention in The Last Dance and layman moviegoers likely see Sony’s continued mining of C-level material as a non-event or even an epilogue in the overall Sony Spider-Verse movies.

Globally Venom: The Last Dance made $124M on 53,700+ screens across 64 markets for an impressive overall global tally of $175M, the third biggest international opening of the year in the genre behind Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.

Top Performers At This Weekends Box Office

Focus Features’ Conclave fetched $6.5M domestically in its opening weekend.

Directed by 2022’s Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, Edward Berger, the papacy-themed mystery thriller Conclave showed in 1,753 theaters to take the number three spot. With a Rotten Tomatoes critical score of 92%, audience score of 82%, “B+” CinemaScore, and 4 out of 5 from PostTrak audiences, polls indicate that 77% of the audience was 35+, ticket buyers were split male 54%: 46% female.

Conclave appears to be a destination film for older audiences with acting veterans like Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, and John Lithgow,

Sean Baker’s critically praised drama Anora increased earnings by $867,142K on 34 screens for Neon this frame for a PSA of $25,504- more than double Venom: The Last Dance‘s score. The domestic earnings for Anora now total $1.6M.