Venom: The Last Dance’s Thursday Box Office Sets New Low for the Trilogy

Venom: The Last Dance opened with around $8.5 million at the box office in its Thursday night previews. That’s $1.5 million less than Venom earned in 2018 and $3.1 million less than Venom: Let There Be Carnage made in the same period. Analysts are predicting the movie will earn somewhere in the neighborhood of $60-70 million at the domestic box office and around $180 million worldwide. The bad news? That’s significantly lower than Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which opened with $90 million at the domestic box office (even though it was 2021 and a bunch of theaters had not yet reopened from the pandemic).

The good news? Venom: The Last Dance has a pretty manageable budget by superhero standards — reported to be around $100 million — so it will break even pretty quickly. For context, the movie cost half of what Joker: Folie a Deux did, and that movie made just $37.8 million in its opening frame.

The degree to which Venom: The Last Dance will be a hit will likely depend on its longevity (which of course is tied closely to fan reactions). The first movie had a heavy dose of skepticism from audiences, but after its first weekend, it held on pretty strong due to good worth-of-mouth and ended up making over $850 million worldwide. That’s more than Man of Steel, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3, or Deadpool 2.

By contrast, Venom: Let There Be Carnage had a huge opening weekend in part due to how much audiences enjoyed the first movie. Then, fans weren’t as tickled by the second installment, and while it opened bigger than Venom did, it ended up with far less money — just a hair over $500 million globally.

The performance of Venom: The Last Dance could have an impact on what happens next with the character. Obviously, the MCU has already teased its version of Venom coming…sometime…with that post-credits stinger from Spider-Man: No Way Home. Meanwhile, the third Venom movie seems to be setting up a King in Black story for future movies, with Andy Serkis as Knull.

It’s difficult to know what Sony considers a hit and a miss at this point. There have been some critical and financial catastrophes, like Morbius and Madame Web, sprinkled in amid hits like Venom and the Spider-Verse movies. It seems like they can’t quite decide how much they want to commit to their whole Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, since the movies are mostly pretty expensive and any that aren’t hits can be a real headache.

In addition to Tom Hardy in the title role, Venom: The Last Dance stars Juno Temple, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach, Stephen Graham, and Cristo Fernandez. The film was directed by Kelly Marcel.

Venom: The Last Dance is in theaters now.