Is Venom 3 a Flop?

How has Venom 3 (Venom: Last Dance) done at the box office?

Let us consider a suitable benchmark first, namely how the two preceding Venom films did. The first two movies' grosses broke the $200 million in North America--at a time of lower ticket prices, and, in the case of the sequel, when the pandemic still had moviegoing severely depressed. Put into today's terms the first Venom made $267 million in North America in 2018, the second $244 million in the strained conditions of 2021.

By contrast Venom 3 has made $139 million as of its seventh weekend, with almost no way to go past that --about half what its predecessors made when we count in inflation, and indeed just a little more than Boxoffice Pro estimated the movie might make in just its opening weekend a month before release (when the range of its forecast was $80-$120 million).

There is no way to call that a ringing success.

In fairness, the film held up a bit better internationally from the second film to the third, at least, the international gross for Venom 3 roughly matching that for Venom 2, after inflation (with some $334 million collected)--though that was admittedly a significant comedown from what the first film did ($643 million internationally in 2018, equal to over $800 million today, a fact which netted the backers a robust quarter of a billion dollar profit according to Deadline's calculations).

The result is that one could say that a franchise that opened with a bang, and which some thought would have done better on its second go in happier circumstances, with all that seemed to promise for the third and closing installment, is going out with a whimper. Still, my guess is that given the movie's low production cost (just $110-$120 million according to the estimates I have seen reported) the near half-billion theatrical gross with which it is finishing up may get it past break-even, with the post-theatrical income enabling it to do better still--such that if a disappointment the backers at least end up "in the black" on this one, which is more than can be said for a good many recent comic book-based movies.