Venom: Let There Be Carnage has become the second film of 2021 to cross the $200 million threshold at the domestic box office. The sequel to the highly profitable film was delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After the strong box office of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Sony decided to bump up Venom: Let There Be Carnage's release date to the first week of October.
The move proved incredibly successful as Venom: Let There Be Carnage opened with $90 million in its opening weekend and became the biggest opening weekend of 2021 and the biggest since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters in March 2020. The film outperformed Marvel Studios' own Black Widow and DC comics adaptation of The Suicide Squad. The film's strong word of mouth, coupled with it being a theatrically exclusive film helped keep the film around in the top 5 of the box office since it came out.
According to The Wrap, Venom: Let There Be Carnage has now grossed $200 million dollars in its seventh week of release. This makes it only one of two films to do so since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the first being Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Venom: Let There Be Carnage is currently the second highest-grossing film of 2021 at the domestic box office, behind only Shang-Chi.
If estimates hold, the film will have grossed $202 million at the box office, which is just $13 million shy of the first film's domestic total when it released in 2018. That is an impressive gross considering Venom: Let There Be Carnage was released in a post-pandemic landscape that has seen many audiences hesitant to return to the theaters. Venom: Let There Be Carnage is still a way off from its worldwide total of Venom, as it currently has grossed $426 million worldwide against the first film's $856.1 million worldwide gross, yet that film secured a Chinese release date whereas the sequel has not.
Sony Pictures is likely very happy with the gross of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, as the studio has two high profile releases in Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Spider-Man: No Way Home set to round out the year. Now that both Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage have proven so successful in October, it is likely the recently announced October 6, 2023 release date that Sony secured for a Marvel movie will be given to a third Venom film. While fans await a confrontation between Venom and Spider-Man, Sony is likely looking to see if the box office success of the Venom films will carry over into Morbius and the planned Kraven the Hunter film as the studio attempts to launch its own cinematic universe.
Source: The Wrap
