Like other Marvel movies before it, Venom: Let There Be Carnage made a boatload of money.
In its opening weekend, the Tom Hardy/Woody Harrelson film where they eat people and hiss at one another earned $124 million domestically (via Deadline). That’s a sizeable haul for a mid-pandemic movie, and it usurps Black Widow’s $110 million record held earlier this year. It’s also the second-best October opening weekend ever, coming in behind…oh, just Venom. Funny, that.
Internationally, Carnage took home $19 million thanks to Russia, becoming the highest opening for Sony Pictures in that region. The movie has yet to release in China, and it’s not even clear if it will. Fellow Marvel movies Black Widow and Shang-Chi aren’t releasing there for various reasons, but China is also the reason why the original Venom took off in the first place by hyping the symbiote as the perfect partner in your life. Perhaps it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Outside of being a Marvel movie, albeit one not directly connected to the MCU, the original Venom made a boatload of cash. Despite poor reviews, Tom Hardy’s weird performance and the incredible sexual energy he exudes with himself took that movie to a $1,180 million global box office. Even though these are PG-13 movies, October is the season of monsters, making these films a perfect watch for the scary season.
And then there’s No Time to Die. The final James Bond movie for Daniel Craig — no really this time — released at the end of September in the UK and other regions and took home $124 million. It’s expected to have an international opening of $164 million, and that’s before its release in the U.S. next week. The last several weeks have proven that folks will show up for Marvel, and soon it’ll be time to see if they’ll do the same for Bond and his repeatedly delayed final outing.
Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.