Venom 3 Tops Box Office for Third Weekend, Beating New A24 Horror Movie

Venom: The Last Dance won the top spot at the domestic box office for the third consecutive weekend, grossing $14 million, per Deadline. The comic book adaptation beat a pair of new releases, with horror movie Heretic ($10.5 million) and holiday dramedy The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (about $10 million) coming in second and third place. Animated film The Wild Robot ($6 million) and another horror film, Smile 2 ($4.9 million), round out the weekend’s top five.

Deadline notes that this is the first time a Venom film won three straight weekends, citing thin competition as the main reason why. Last weekend’s major new release, Robert Zemeckis’ Here, was a massive box office flop.

Premiering in late October, Venom: The Last Dance opened with $51 million domestically. While that was obviously good enough for first place, the figure was still a franchise low, perhaps a byproduct of the film’s negative reviews (it has a score of 41% on Rotten Tomatoes). As of this writing, The Last Dance is projected to have earned $112.5 million domestically, and it’s up to $329.5 million worldwide. The project was moderately budgeted — for a superhero movie — at $120 million, which means it should prove to be a profitable endeavor for Sony.

[Related: What’s Going on With Sony’s Spider-Man Universe?]

However, Venom: The Last Dance is a case of diminishing returns for the property. The franchise got off to a rousing start back in 2018, with the original film grossing $856 million worldwide. Sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage followed in 2021, opening during a time when theaters were still recovering from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It debuted with a strong $90 million domestic opening (which was higher than the first Venom), en route to a $506.8 million global haul.

In all likelihood, The Last Dance‘s reign atop the box office will come to an end shortly. Even if it doesn’t lose the No. 1 spot to next weekend’s Red One (Dwayne Johnson isn’t the draw he once was, as evidenced by Black Adam), it will surely come behind Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, which opens on November 22. After a quiet couple of weeks, the marketplace is set to get a boost with high-profile titles during the busy holiday season, with the likes of Wicked and Moana 2 looking to make a splash. It’s impressive The Last Dance held on to the top spot for as long as it did, but it’s about to face much stiffer competition.

It will be interesting to see how The Last Dance‘s commercial performance impacts Sony’s decisions regarding the future of the Venom franchise. On one hand, three profitable installments is a recipe for more entries, as there’s a track record of audiences turning up. On the other, the lower totals indicate viewers are starting to tire of the symbiote. If the series is to continue, perhaps it would be smart to shake up the formula a bit. That’s what makes rumors of an Agent Venom movie so intriguing, as that could inject new life into the franchise a pave a way forward. Sony’s other Marvel movies haven’t made much of an impact, so unless Kraven the Hunter is a breakout hit that fills the void, the studio may opt for more Venom.