‘Venom’ Projected to Win Second Straight Weekend at Box Office

Though the symbiote is used to going toe to toe with Spider-Man, this week sees Venom trying to find off different foes at the box office; specifically, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

The new Marvel movie is vying to take the top spot at movie theaters for its second week, but mounting buzz for A Star Is Born could knock it down to second place. Venom is currently projected to take be #1 at the box office this weekend with $30 million, according to a report from Variety.

However, Thursday’s reports put A Star Is Born in the lead to start the four-day stretch, with the critical darling making $4.5 million to Venom‘s $4.33 million.

Venom exploded out the gate last weekend, making $80 million in its opening bow. The report notes that if the estimates hold, Venom will be the first repeat winner at the box office since Crazy Rich Asians stuck around for three weeks in August.

Despite its box office, Venom was not a hit with critics, and some fans have pointed out some of the fallacies throughout the movie. One particular plot hole pertained to the symbiotes burning through hosts, but one time jump scene showed Riot managed to stay with the same host in Malaysia for six months — betraying the film’s inherent logic.

“That’s one of our few–hopefully–few logic bumps,” director Ruben Fleischer said to Gamespot. “But we had to have a passage of time in order to show Eddie’s downfall, and that was the one thing that doesn’t entirely track. But I like to think that old lady was going around murdering all throughout Malaysia, and she was just having a good old time just shooting shards through different people in Malaysia.”

Errors aside, it hasn’t dulled fan hopes for a sequel. Venom had a huge tease for a major Spider-Man villain in the future, and it looks like Fleischer will get the chance to tell that story with actor Woody Harrelson playing the murdering symbiote known as Carnage.

“So, when we were thinking about including that scene and laying the groundwork for a potential sequel, he was the first person I thought of and a just because selfishly I’m really excited to work with him again, whether it’s in Zombieland 2 or the potential sequel to this film,” Fleischer told ComicBook.com. “But if you think about Natural Born Killers and Mickey, the character he played in that film, I feel like there’s a real lineage that you can trace from Mickey to Cletus and I also think that he hasn’t gone dark in that way for a while.”

Venom is now playing in theaters.