Well, here is a hot take. Top Gun: Maverick is the big box office winner of the year, with a current gross of $617 million domestic and $1.2 billion globally. It’s being hailed by many for reigniting the box office in these rough pandemic times but Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group co-presidents Sanford Panitch and Josh Greenstein say the film owes Sony and Venom: Let There Be Carnage some credit for its box office dominance.
While speaking with Vulture, the pair says Sony Pictures was one of the first studios to bring audiences back to the theater in mass during the pandemic. The studio opened Venom: Let There Be Carnage in October 2021 to a $90 million debut ($10 million more than the original) and $506 million globally. That’s off from the original film’s global haul, but that’s hugely successful during the pandemic. Sony’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife followed in November with $204.4 million worldwide, and then Spider-Man: No Way Home earned $1.9 billion globally to become the third-highest-grossing film in history. According to Greenstein, “When we first started releasing movies last October, there were really no other big movies. Everyone had pushed their big movies to this year, to this summer. We took a big gamble putting ‘Venom’ in theaters. Then we doubled down with ‘Ghostbusters.’ Then our biggest bet was when every other tentpole had fled, we tripled down with ‘Spider-Man’ — our biggest, most important piece of IP.”
Sony also scored with Uncharted, grossing $401 million globally back in February, and it sounds like they want some of the credit for bringing the box office back:
“There’s so much press about ‘Top Gun’ right now. It’s like, ‘The movie business is back!. In a weird way, I would say ‘Top Gun’ is benefitting from us taking our shot. ‘Venom’ is the start of that story that allows ‘Top Gun’ to do the kind of business it did. These things don’t happen overnight. It’s a seeding.”
I see their point a little bit because the opening of Venom: Let There Be Carnage was significant back in October, BUT Sony seems to neglect the fact that we did see other big opening weekends ahead of Venom that included A Quiet Place Part II, Black Widow, Fast 9, Jungle Cruise, Free Guy, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The Venom sequel was undoubtedly a big win, but I think they’re reaching a bit by saying they alone paved the way. Maybe Warner Bros. deserves some credit for braving an uncertain market when they released Godzilla vs. Kong simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max when movie theaters weren’t fully open yet. They likely showed that there was still box office potential as we learned to ease back into moviegoing during the pandemic.
Do YOU agree with Sony’s assessment?