Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage is expected to kick off what could be a (very relative) return to domestic box office normalcy, as the month of October is going to be stacked with films that in normal times would have been big hits (or, as is the case with Dune, either a solid hit or a very high-profile disappointment) in non-Covid times.
The “box office is back in October/November” we were supposed to get last year (with Tenet leading the way for Wonder Woman 1984, Top Gun: Maverick, Halloween Kills and Black Widow) will instead take place this October/November.
Venom 2 will be followed by No Time to Die, Halloween Kills, Dune, Eternals and Ghostbusters: Afterlife heading into Thanksgiving. So, um, Venom: Let There Be Carnage earned $11.6 million in Thursday previews.
That’s actually more than its predecessor’s $10 million (a record for October previews at the time) Thursday gross and second behind only Joker ($13.3 million) among October previews.
The 2018 Venom earned $80 million, again a record for October (surpassed the next year by Joker’s $96 million debut on the same weekend) despite mixed-negative reviews and serious questions about whether audiences gave a damn about a Venom movie disconnected from the Spider-Man mythos.
That question was obviously answered with “Hell, yes,” as the Tom Hardy-led origin story legged out to $214 million domestic and, thanks to a jaw-dropping $269 million in China, a $854 million cume.
Sony likely won’t get similar results this time, but they don’t have to. While Venom cost around $90 million, the Andy Serkis-directed sequel, which stars Woody Harrelson as Carnage, cost closer to $110 million.
So, like a lot of sequels to overperforming originals, the follow-up can earn a lot less while still being quite profitable. It might also be a case of the second film earning about what we all expected from the first flick.
Since domestic markets are comparatively healthier, specifically for surefire event movies, I’m expecting a smaller domestic but larger overseas drop.
That is ironically the opposite of how sequels usually played in pre-Covid times, but we don’t yet know if/when the film will even play in China (which accounted for 31% of Venom’s global total).
Domestically speaking, if Venom 2 (which has earned better reviews and solid consumer buzz) plays like its predecessor, we’re looking at 8x the Thursday number for a pandemic-era record $93 million debut. That’s a gross that we could have expected from Venom 2 on opening weekend even in non-Covid circumstances.
Plenty of folks were just curious about the first Venom movie. While audiences liked it more than critics, folks who weren’t crazy about Venom and might sit this one out.
However, the first film was popular enough, with plenty of advance word that this sequel doubles down on Venom’s rom-com weirdness and Tom Hardy-centric camp.
As such, I wouldn’t expect any Tomb Raider Trap issues this weekend. It’s obviously possible that we could see more Thursday-to-weekend frontloading. After all, it’s a sequel and there are still Covid circumstances at play. A 15% split will still give Let There Be Carnage a $77 million debut weekend.
Even Black Widow-level frontloading ($80 million from a $13.2 million Thursday) would still give Venom 2 a $70 million debut, which would still be fine for a $110 million PG-13 superhero sequel that doesn’t have to break records to break the bank.
As for the better reviews, Venom 2 has a 58% at Rotten Tomatoes while Venom nabbed a 30%, while the average critic score (5.6/10 and 4.5/10) are actually a lot closer.
Once again, the critic score is the most useful one, and it often A) lines up with Metacritic, B) lines up with the general critical consensus and C) usually provides the nuance we all seek beyond fresh/rotten binary conclusions. Nonetheless, this best-case-scenario Thursday gross solidifies what I’ve frankly been saying at least since May, which is that the movies that audiences really wanted to see prior to Covid are still performing on-par with pre-Covid domestic expectations. In related news for the next post, Shang-Chi just topped $200 million domestic.
