While Venom: The Last Dance hasn’t entirely mined the depths of poor performance that Joker: Folie à Deux sank to at the box office, it still hasn’t turned in the anticipated performance we hoped for. Still, this weekend’s box office news is far from bad, as several smaller titles turned in an excellent performance in their class. Entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake, our insider from Blake & Wang P.A, has the good and the bad to share.
Venom: A Sketchy Performance
This hasn’t really been the year for blockbusters at the box office- at least, not the ones we anticipated doing well! The final film in the Sony Venom trilogy managed around $175M globally and $51M domestically. While that’s nothing to complain about, and it was the bulk of the weekend’s North American box office takings, it was a dull performance compared to what tracking suggested for the movie.
Strong Specialty Titles
Offsetting that lackluster performance, however, we have two stunning performances from specialty titles to enjoy. Focus Features’ Conclave kicked off to a strong debut, while Neon’s Anora has an excellent expansion, and A24’s We Live in Time also enjoyed a successful widening of its total screens. While the 3 films only contributed about $14M to the box office total between them, these were exceptional results for the size and scale of the films. After all, Anora only played in 34 locations!
While it is understandable, after what can only be described as a flop from Joker: Folie à Deux, that many hopes for a theatrical resurgence were pinned on Venom, the film has still managed to take almost as much as Joker’s full run to date in its initial weekend, and at least its performance was solid, falling only $20M short of its predicted opening.
The film is also performing fantastically overseas and should make a profit. Plus, it’s always great to see special releases perform well, even if they don’t deliver the most impressive numbers. To date, the 2024 box office is tracking at 12% less than 2023, which, while still problematic, is considerably better than we believed possible at the start of the year- and that’s worth celebrating, too.
