Long Range Forecast — October 25, 2024
Venom: The Last Dance | Sony / Columbia
Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $80M – $120M
By far the highest earners among Sony’s live-action superhero series—not exactly a high bar, given the domestic cumes of Morbius ($39M domestic opening, $73.8M domestic total) and Madame Web ($15.3M domestic opening, $43.8 domestic total)—the Venom films have been remarkably consistent at the box office up to this point. Both films opened in the first weekend of October, and though they opened approximately $10M apart—$80.2M for 2018’s Venom and $90M for 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage—their domestic runs both topped out at $213.5M. Let There Be Carnage outgrossed the first Venom by a mere $38,958 domestically.
It would be an extremely weird coincidence if the antihero trilogy closed out with another $213.5M earner—and, in fact, our panel predicts a domestic cume above that, in the $250-$300M range, with an opening in line with—or possibly above, pending changes to tracking—The Last Dance‘s predecessors.
The success of Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage drives expectations for now, though marketing and reception will still be important in adjusting tracking as we approach The Last Dance‘s late-October release date. The announcement that this will be the last entry in the franchise should help its performance, as should a relative lack of superhero movies hitting theaters in 2024: Deadpool & Wolverine in July, Joker: Folie à Deux on October 4, and Sony’s long-delayed Kraven the Hunter in December. By contrast, 2018 saw seven comic book movies open theatrically. Even 2021, with its relatively slim Covid-era slate, had six.
That said, The Last Dance could be adversely affected by the aforementioned Joker sequel snagging that first-weekend-of-October slot that did so well for Venom and Let There Be Carnage. Strong holds from Joker: Folie à Deux, out three weeks before The Last Dance, could cut into The Last Dance‘s debut weekend… but it’s looking increasingly unlikely that Folie à Deux will have that kind of juice, as lackluster presales have tracking trending downwards.
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