Venom: The Last Dance Box Office Is Both Better and Worse Than Expected

What has been billed as the final entry in Sony’s Tom Hardy-starring Venom film series hasn’t been expected to live up to the lofty box office expectations of the rest of the franchise. Venom: The Last Dance was projected to deliver a significantly lower opening than the previous Venom entries, with the pre-release numbers suggesting it would pull in around $65 million domestically this weekend. The Last Dance actually opened much lower than that here in North America, but it got an unexpected boost overseas that makes its opening haul a lot more respectable.

Venom: The Last Dance brought in just $51 million domestically this weekend, which is well below the $80 million and $90 million opening weekend totals of its predecessors. While that is certainly disappointing for Sony, international audiences showed up to save the day.

Sony’s new Venom film received a $124 million opening from 64 international markets, which combines with the domestic total for a $175 million global opening. For a movie that carries a reported budget just over $100 million, that international boost goes a long way toward making it another profitable Venom outing for Sony.

Maybe the biggest surprise of Venom‘s opening weekend is the massive success the film has had in China. The Last Dance earned $46 million over its five-day opening in China, which is good enough to make it the biggest Hollywood opening in the country all year. It’s also the biggest superhero movie opening in China since Spider-Man: Far From Home back in 2019.

Only Disney’s Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine have had better international openings in 2024, which makes Venom: The Last Dance an instant overseas success. That definitely makes up for the weak domestic opening, that could’ve been disastrous for Sony’s Symbiote franchise.

While Tom Hardy seems content to walk away from Venom after completing the trilogy, the events of the film make it clear that Sony has plans to continue playing in the Venom/Symbiote sandbox. Knull has been set up as a potentially major villain for future films, while other major Symbiotes were introduced and teased for additional stories down the line.

Had the global opening for Venom: The Last Dance followed the trend of its domestic opening, Sony might have had to abandon those plans. With this massive international success, though, the studio clearly sees that there is life left in the world of Venom and Knull.