“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” Has Biggest Opening Weekend in More Than A Year
Sony Pictures’ Venom: Let There Be Carnage took a massive bite out of the box office this weekend. The second installment in Sony’s Venom-verse, if you will, feasted on a pandemic-era record $90.1 million debut. This is good news for theater owners and a potential sign that things are, at long last, beginning to turn around. Overseas, No Time To Die has had a very impressive opening, too, racing to $119 million in its foreign market debut.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage hails from talented actor/director Andy Serkis, who leaned into the film’s inherent lunacy (Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock is essentially in a romantic relationship with the alien symbiote who shares his body), and turned the dial up to 11. This hearty opening proves there are plenty of people who love the zany, darker world of Venom, which unleashed a big, bad new villain in Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Casady, who hosts his own alien symbiote, the titular Carnage, as well as Naomie Harris’s Shriek, Cletus Casaday’s lethal leading lady.
“We are also pleased that patience and theatrical exclusivity have been rewarded with record results,” Sony’s chairman Tom Rothman said in a press statement. “With apologies to Mr. Twain: The death of movies has been greatly exaggerated.”
“It reaffirms the importance of the theatrical window,” Sony’s president of domestic distribution Adrian Smith said in a statement. “We knew we had a really big movie and an excited fanbase. The marketplace comes out for the right movie,” said Sanford Panitch, president of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage bested two of Marvel’s big recent releases, Black Widow, which had a robust $80 million opening in theaters, and Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings ($75 million), as well as Universal’s F9 ($70 million). Interestingly, Let There Be Carnage also bested the original Venom ($80 million), which opened in a pre-pandemic world of 2018.
For more on Venom: Let There Be Carnage, check out these stories:
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” Early Reactions Delight in Film’s Insanity
New “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” Clip Reveals New Villain Shriek
New “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” Clip Unleashes the Beast
New “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” Teaser Highlights Worst Roommate in the World
A New “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” Featurette Reveals Fresh Footage
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” Unleashes Official Trailer
Featured image: An image from “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.
