MOVIE NEWS – Despite the hype, Venom 3 is heading for the franchise’s worst opening weekend…

According to estimates, Venom 3 (that is, Venom: The Last Dance in its full title) will perform well below the opening weekends of the previous two films. After the box office disaster of Joker: Folie à Deux, theaters were probably hoping to see a major boost at the box office from the Venom sequel. As with Joker 2, however, a successful predecessor doesn’t seem to translate into a strong opening weekend for a new entry. It seems that The Last Dance will not reach the heights of its predecessors.

Variety estimates that Venom: The Last Dance is on track for a $65 million opening weekend. This would make it the eighth highest-grossing opening weekend of 2024. However, it falls well short of Venom’s $80 million opening weekend and the sequel’s $90 million opening in 2021. If the estimates hold, The Last Dance will open $15 million below Venom and $25 million below Venom 2. Even with an $85 million international estimate and a $150 million worldwide opening weekend, it falls short of the first film’s $205 million opening weekend. Of course, Venom 2 got off to a slower start in international markets due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

If The Last Dance performs below estimates, it will continue the trend of underperforming sequels to popular superhero movies.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Marvels, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Joker: Folie à Deux, and now potentially Venom: The Last Dance show that audiences generally aren’t interested in superhero movie sequels. In the meantime, of course, The Last Run will still have a chance to perform well. It’s the last major movie to hit theaters for three weeks as studios try to avoid releasing movies during the 2024 presidential election.

Venom 3: no strong bond for the audience?!

One factor probably working against Venom 3 is that there isn’t much marketing hype. 2018’s Venom was a solo film for a hugely popular Marvel character and came out at the height of superhero movie popularity. Audiences likely showed up to see if Venom would be connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Venom 2 featured the last character (Carnage), one of Marvel’s most famous villains, to attract viewers and become a big box office hit after the COVID-19 pandemic. Venom 2 briefly held the record for the biggest opening weekend following the COVID-19 theatrical shutdown, which it lost two months later to Sony’s own Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured Venom in the post-credits scene.

Even though Venom: The Last Dance was heralded as the character’s final adventure, it seems that’s not enough for some. Knull is a new villain in Marvel Comics and doesn’t have the appeal of Carnage. The general audience probably also knows that these Venom movies are unrelated to the Spider-Man movies in the MCU. Despite the rumors, Venom is unlikely to share the screen with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker or any other version of the superhero. Between the two Venom movies, Sony Pictures also released Morbius and Madame Web, which certainly hurt their Spider-Man brand. Venom 3’s early reputation with fans and critics has proven to be good, so perhaps that should help boost ticket sales in the coming weeks. But it still paints the picture that superhero movies are no longer the guaranteed blockbusters they were even three years ago…

Source: Variety