Weekend Box Office: Venom underperforms domestically; is a hit overseas

Another week…another disappointing weekend at the box office. This has been a brutal fall season for Hollywood, with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice the only smash hit of the season. While other movies like The Wild Robot and Terrifier 3 have performed well, would-be blockbusters like Transformers One and Joker: Folie a Deux fell flat. Case in point – Joker 2 isn’t even on the top 10 this weekend, with its $600k weekend placing it well outside the chart. Ouch.

Another potential breakout hit, Venom: The Last Dance, underperformed this weekend, with it grossing $51 million domestically (which is just $1 million above what we predicted). While that’s not a bad start for a modestly budgeted superhero movie, the first Venom opened with $80 million, while the sequel – despite coming out during the pandemic, made $90 million in its first frame. The poor CinemaScore rating (B-minus) suggests audiences are suffering from a little bit of superhero fatigue. 

However, this third Venom movie should still turn out to be profitable for Sony, with the movie overperforming internationally, where it made a huge $124 million (not counting domestic), making it the third biggest opening weekend of the year after Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine. 

Parker Finn’s Smile 2 easily took second place, with $9.4 million, but the 59% drop is pretty steep, as the original only slipped 18% in its second frame. With a $40 million gross (so far), Smile 2 will turn a solid profit for Paramount, but it won’t be the money maker the first movie was (although I’d still expect at least one more sequel – which our man Tyler Nichols wrote about at length today).  

Third place ended up being a bit of a pleasant surprise, with Focus Features having a word-of-mouth hit with Edward Berger’s Conclave, which exceeded expectations to gross $6.5 million. With the Ralph Fiennes-led thriller a front-runner for some Oscar nominations, expect this one to stick around theaters for awhile. It’s more-or-less tied with The Wild Robot, which is also reporting $6.5 million for the weekend, with a total gross of $111 million for this well-reviewed family flick. 

Another word-of-mouth drama, A24’s We Live In Time, also did relatively well this weekend, making $4.8 million in fifth place and a $11.7 million total. While those aren’t blockbuster numbers, younger audiences are discovering the film, which is a solid choice for couples on a date. Terrifier 3 slipped to sixth place, with a $4.2 million gross and a $43.1 million total. All-in-all, Art the Clown is leading the film to be one of the year’s most profitable movies. 

The global smash hit, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, also continued to pull in solid numbers, with a $3.2 million gross and a $288 million domestic total. Of all the movies on the top 10, the arthouse smash Anora pulled in the biggest per screen average, making $25.5k per screen (more than twice what Venom: The Last Dance did), with an $867k weekend on only thirty-four screens. The Lego animated Pharrell doc, Piece By Piece, made $720k, giving it a low-key $8.8 million total, while Transformers One rounded out the top 10 with a $720k weekend and a $57 million domestic total.

The box office doldrums seem set to continue next weekend, with Robert Zemeckis’s Here one of the few wide releases coming out. Do you think Venom 3 might rally in its second weekend? Let us know in the comments!