Sony's Venom continues to tear up the box office, now crossing the $800 million mark worldwide, and officially surpassing the gross of 2017's Wonder Woman. Based on the Spider-Man villain first featured (to the chagrin of many fans) in Spider-Man 3, Venom stars Tom Hardy as journalist Eddie Brock, who becomes a super-anti-hero after merging with an alien symbiote and proceeds to wreak havoc.
Despite Venom being less-known among general audiences than Marvel characters like Spider-Man and Captain America, the Venom movie arrived with big hype, and more-than lived up to expectations with a record-breaking October opening in the U.S. In its overseas release, Venom has racked up even more huge numbers for Sony, crushing the competition when it arrived in China on its way to a string of box office milestones. Venom's box office even recently surpassed that of 2017's Justice League, a movie that featured a bevy of popular superheroes from the DC universe, including movie mainstays Superman and Batman.
Related: How Venom's Success Could Change The MCU (And Spider-Man)
As Venom continues its impressive run at the global box office, the film has officially taken down another DCEU title, surpassing Wonder Woman in worldwide returns (via Box Office Mojo). As of November 25, Venom has now earned a reported $822.5 million worldwide, with $610 million of that total coming in non-U.S. markets. Wonder Woman by comparison took in $821 million worldwide, but with a much bigger domestic gross of $412 million vs. Venom's $211 million.
In China alone, Venom has taken in $205 million, making it the tenth-highest-grossing movie of the year in that country. As has been proven time-and-time again, when it comes to selling American movies in China, over-the-top comic book style films are the way to go. Even so, the wild success of Venom in that market and overseas generally has been somewhat surprising. Clearly, something about the movie's story has struck a chord with worldwide audiences, much more-so than with domestic audiences. As of now, Venom's grosses in China alone are close to surpassing its grosses is North America.
What do these numbers mean at the end of the day? For one thing, they guarantee that Venom will get a sequel. Indeed, the movie's mid-credit sequence set up a sequel that would feature Woody Harrelson as the comic book character Carnage. Though Sony has yet to officially announce that expected Venom follow-up, it's surely only a matter of time before they greenlight a second aventure for Tom Hardy's symbiote. Whether Sony's Venom and Disney's Spider-Man will ever share the screen is another question entirely. But there's no question that Venom has proven its value as a potential franchise, and it seems Disney will now at least have to consider the possibility of allowing Spider-Man and Venom to one day clash on the big screen.
More: Every Version Of Venom Ranked, From Scrub To OP
Source: Box Office Mojo