Venom: Let There Be Carnage has scored the biggest opening weekend at the box office since 2019.
Deadline reports the Tom Hardy-starring film grossed $90 million this weekend, exceeding Black Widow’s previous record of $80.8 million to earn the highest domestic opening since the pandemic. Globally, the Marvel sequel took in an additional $13.8 million, which brings its global box office total to a sizable $103.9 million.
“For us, Venom: Let There Be Carnage absolutely validates our exclusive theatrical window strategy,” Sony President Josh Greenstein said in a statement, perDeadline. “If you look at the history of theatrical, the obituaries have been written many times and they’ve always been wrong. We had confidence in the theatrical experience, confidence in our big valuable IP and took full advantage and had the patience to weather all of this. That strategy is paying off which we’re happy about. It’s a nice validation of the theatrical strategy.”
Before Venom’s impressive opening weekend, the top pandemic-era debuts were: Black Widow ($80 million), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($75 million), and F9 ($70 million).
The film’s director, Andy Serkis, recently teased the possibility of an eventual MCU crossover.
“That’s the question on everyone’s lips,” Serkis said earlier this month. “They want to know when Venom is going to meet Spider-Man. Personally, it’s never going to happen. I’m only joking, of course it’s going to happen. I think there’s so much… it depends on when you want to get there and also what the appetite is. If people want more Venom stories, than to jump straight to Spider-Man you could be missing out on so many great supervillain characters in between now and then.”
