The previous Venom: Let There Be Carnage drew 10 million people during its opening weekend off a $90M opening, and the threequel here, Venom: The Last Dance, is pulling in close to half that in admissions. The numbers speak for themselves, at least at the domestic box office, as Sony/Marvel’s Venom: The Last Dance saw the franchise’s lowest domestic opening with $51M after a $22M Friday/previews and a $16.8M Saturday, -23%. All of this went down during the first World Series match up in 43 years between the LA Dodgers and New York Yankees, the former getting the better of the latter, which yielded seven-year record ratings on Friday with 15.2M viewers watching.

However, the Dodgers and the Yankees are only partially to blame when it comes to Venom: The Last Dance‘s lackluster grosses as the threequel was fully rejected by stateside fanboys.

Venom 3‘s start is $14M less than the $65M projected opening, and it’s $39M less than the previous installment’s franchise domestic record opening. Venom movies were never made to speak to the top of anyone’s intelligence. Anora, this is not.

Speaking of the stripper with a heart of gold and nerves of steel drama, the Mikey Madison NEON release upticks from 28 theaters to 34 this weekend with an amazing $867K (+58%), busting into the top 10 after a $280K Friday and ten-day of $1.6M.

Venoms were always a herky-jerky Jekyll and Hyde mish-mosh earning B+ scores (good enough to fly with mass audiences), and this time around, the threequel gets a B-.

It would be easy to scream Joker: Folie a Deux at Sony in this instance, but it’s not apples to oranges, it’s like apples to a chair. With a $175M global start, Last Dance is bound to course correct, and the plan is that Sony will still profit on this threequel. Internationally, the film made $124M, which is the third largest opening of 2024 for a Hollywood title in like-for-like markets behind Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine. All in, the current global franchise box office for Venom is $1.5 billion.

The first Venom grossed close to $247M after all ancillaries. Sony didn’t willy-nilly spend a near $200M on a musical Venom here. Sony kept their production cost in line at $120M before P&A, very similar to the first with a co-finance partner TSG. If Sony gets faulted for anything, it’s for making more of the same old, same old in Venom, and not one-upping enough from the previous installment.

The third installment here was sold in ads as the exciting conclusion. Furthermore, there was the introduction of a supposed fan-fave villain in Knull — but a good portion of people who watched the previous two Venoms didn’t care. This opposed to Carnage who was a fan favorite. During the last sequel’s social media campaigns, there was a ‘March Madness’ bracket with 16 Spidey villain where fans voted each one to the next round, and Carnage won big time over Venom, Green Goblin, Doc Ock, etc). Carnage even had a popular video game during the 1990s.

But there’s more upset than that: The end credits sequence of Let There Be Carnage connected Venom/Eddie Brock to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, causing fans to believe that there was a Spiderman and Venom crossover in the works. That end credits sequence leaked before Venom 2 released, causing a stampede. RelishMix observed that fans were ticked off that there wasn’t a crossover; at the very least they wanted Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man if Tom Holland’s wasn’t available.

As Disney’s Marvel Studios (who has no involvement in this picture) perfects and retools itself in regards to the development of superhero movies, even delaying its Mahershala Ali reboot of Blade, so should other studios handling comic book fare. Some will argue that superhero movies have gone the way of the westerns in the 1950s: Not if you make them better, and we’re standing at a time at the box office when Deadpool & Wolverine is the highest grossing R-rated movie ever at $1.3 billion.

When a sequel like Let There Be Carnage makes a half billion worldwide, and mushrooms the Venom franchise to $1.36 billion, it forces the hand of a major studio to just make another. The over-performance of Carnage stemmed from a perfect place in the fall 2021 calendar as moviegoers were just coming back from Covid, opening a month after Disney/Marvel’s Shang Chi. Most of all, there wasn’t an epic World Series match-up which was stealing men away. However, it’s clear most moviegoers didn’t love part two any more than part one. Hence, there was that hurdle that Sony faced in making the threequel. Tom Hardy has always had a big voice and big foot in this franchise. He was paired this time around with the franchise’s co-scribe Kelly Marcel who made her feature directorial debut. No one at the studio told Hardy and Marcel that the screenplay required further development. Why did Sony take the chance on a first-time filmmaker? Marcel was integral to the success of the Venom series and Hardy got along with her. You’ll remember Hardy and director Ruben Fleischer reportedly bumped heads on the first Venom. Andy Serkis couldn’t return to direct after Carnage, I hear, due to scheduling issues and work on his next directing gig, the feature take of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (Serkis appears as a voice in Venom 3).

Then there’s the whole bad luck of this weekend. Why did Sony move the movie up from Nov. 8 to a weekend when there’s the possibility of a World Series? Typically, nobody cares if Cleveland and San Diego are in the series, but an East vs. West brawl like Yankees and Dodgers was just never factored in. The notion of going this weekend stemmed from having at least three weekends of play before Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans’ Red One arrives and the enormous three tentpole hurricane that is Wicked, Moana 2 and Gladiator II over Thanksgiving. If this World Series goes seven games, Venom 3 could get further squashed like a bug.

There are other distractions this weekend including pre-Halloween festivities, AFI Fest, birthday parties as well as men being taken hostage by the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 yesterday on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S; a game that’s projected to rack up millions and millions in sales.

Updated under the hood of Venom 3: PostTrak is harder than CinemaScore as always with 73% positive, 55% definite recommend. Men leaning at 65%. 25-34 year olds were biggest demo at 32% with 27% those who bought tickets over 35. Latino and Hispanic moviegoers led here at 34%, followed by 32% Caucasian, 18% Black, 10% Asian and 6% Native American. Imax and PLFs rep 40% of business. The pic was shot with IMAX Certified Digital Cameras and did $4.8M in that large format exhibitor’s auditoriums. I Venom 3 is playing best in the South, South Central and West with the AMC Burbank the threequel’s No. 1 venue at a $80K through Saturday.

With just 715M followers across TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, Venom 3‘s social media reach was under that of the original Venom (754M) and well ahead that of Let There Be Carnage (417M); the latter was low due to all social media analytics being impacted during Covid.

Performing slightly beyond its $4M-$6M projection is Focus Features’ Conclave with an expected third place of $6.5M at 1,753 theaters and a B+ CinemaScore after a $2.5M Friday and $2.8M Saturday, 84% positive on Posttrak and a 62% definite recommend. Best playability for this Ralph Fiennes-Stanley Tucci-John Lithgow-Isabella Rossellini drama is the East Coast. Focus is only in for a portion of the $20M production cost as they only took domestic. Should this have platformed some argue? Was it wise to go wide? For a movie about Vatican holy dudes, aimed at significantly older sophisticated audiences (77% over 35, biggest demo is 55+ at 44%, 67% Caucasian), best to go wide versus a platform and get as much gross as you can before putting it on a home entertainment play for the holidays. This isn’t alluring Anora, who is going to tempt audiences weekend by weekend during her awards season run. Things to keep in consideration for this type of opening for Conclave: 2008 Catholic thriller, Doubt, did $5.3M in its 1,267 wide break (after two weekends of exclusivity). The king of post-Covid indie movies, Everything Everywhere All at Once, which yes, isn’t the exact comp here for Conclave, did $6.05M in its wide break at 1,250 sites. Focus Features’ Oscar darling from last year, The Holdovers, did $2.7M when it went to 1,478 locations, finishing at $20.3M. That’s some perspective in regard to the solid number here from Conclave as a specialty release. It’s in good company. Now, it’s just about whether it can do 4x multiple or better. AMC Lincoln Square at $31K (through yesterday) was the top grossing theater for Conclave. NYC was the film’s strongest market followed by Los Angeles despite the opening game of the World Series.

A24 and Studio Canal’s We Live in Time with $4.8M after a 2,964 wide break and a $1.87M Friday and $1.68M Saturday is playing evenly across the country. The British weepy drama won over the Regal Green Hills in Nashville, TN on Friday night with the AMC Boston Commons with the pic’s biggest grossing theater of the weekend with just over $10K through Saturday. Nothing to complain about here in a weekend three that’s up 20% from last weekend’s platform step. PostTrak updated is 82% positive, 61% definite recommend with 65% women showing up, 3% of the audience between 13-17 years old, 48% of the audience between 18-24 years old, and 21% of the audience 35+ years old. Diversity demos are 51% Caucasian, 28% Latino and Hispanic, 6% Black, 11% Asian and 4% Native American/other.

On the specialty side is Vertical’s horror musical Your Monster starring Melissa Barrera which did $365K in its first day Friday which included Monday Mystery movie sneaks and Thursday previews, $88K Saturday and $62K Sunday for $515K 3-day.

Again, who the hell knew we’d be trailing behind last year’s October weekends which were gripped by the strikes, and alas, we are given the tremendous success of Taylor Swift: Eras Tour and Five Nights at Freddy‘s a year ago. Comscore reports this morning that this weekend at $92M is -28% from a year ago when Freddy‘s opened to $80M+ and drove the frame to $128.4M.

Chart updated with Sunday figures:

via Deadline