What kind of poison is invading the box office this weekend? It’s Venom 3, a.k.a. Venom: The Last Dance! Another superhero (villain?) film taking a bite out of the movie theaters, Venom 3 is following a slump in comic-book films at the box office, like Joker 2. Unfortunately, they will never match up to Deadpool’s impact. It’s hard living in Ryan Reynolds’s shadow. The Tom Hardy–led Sony-Marvel film is estimated to earn $52 million domestically this weekend — less than its projected total of $65 million and way less than 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s opening of $90 million. Maybe it’ll find its audience once Halloweekend and the World Series are over.
It’s easy enough to compare the comic-book-inspired movies against one another, but how would everyone do on the dance floor? Venom 3 isn’t the only movie title in which executives wanted to highlight the suspense of a final tango. Save the Last Dance (2001) had a $23 million opening, exceeding the film’s budget of $13 million and our minds of what a final audition could look like. Sharon Stone’s 1996 film Last Dance earned $2 million, and more recently, Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023) had $8 million for a Galentine’s Day peg. So at least Venom is topping the “Last Dance” charts.
