Venom 3 Opening Weekend Is Slow, But Beats Joker 2

Sony's Venom movies truly are a box office anomaly. Glancing at the Metacritic scores, the first Venom confused critics and was, at best, tepid among fans but still managed to rake in over $850 million in 2018. The second, Let There Be Carnage, also had mixed reviews and did relatively okay, but still a nosedive from the previous installment with $500 million--though that can be partially attributed to movie-goers being weary about theaters at that time. Venom: The Last Dance is coming in with the weakest opening weekend, but is on track to beating another baddie at the box office: The Joker.

Though The Last Dance took the number one spot in the country, it only opened to $51 million--slightly off from the projections of $65 million and much lower than the prior two installments by $30 and $40 million, respectively. Let There Be Carnage opened with $90 million, beating the first movie, and setting a pandemic record at the time. Despite the low numbers, it might be surprising to see that it beat the Joker sequel, which opened at $39 million.

Looking at the history of the two franchises, even two months ago it seemed like an unlikely scenario. However, with Joker 2 bombing, losing hundreds of millions of dollars for Warner Bros., and receiving a swift home release, the Spider-Man anti-hero could potentially outperform Joker in every way.

Even with the slow start in North America, The Last Dance is doing well overseas and earning an additional $124 million, bringing the global total to about $175 million. Joker 2's entire box-office run was, thus far, just over $200 million.

The Venom series is the only success from the Spider-Man-less Sony films concentrating on the wall-crawler's rogues gallery and ancillary characters like Madame Web and Morbius. The twice-delayed Kraven the Hunter with Aaron Johnson-Taylor will be next in line, which opens in December.