Venom: Let There Be Carnage Is Doing Better At The Box Office Than Original Movie, Despite Pandemic

The Venom sequel, Let There Be Carnage, had a very strong opening this past weekend at the North American box office. It made $90.1 million in the US and Canada to surpass Black Widow ($80.8 million) to become the highest-grossing movie during the pandemic for its opening weekend, according to Deadline.

Let There Be Carnage is actually doing even better than 2018's Venom, which made $80.2 million for its opening weekend--and there was no pandemic at the time.

"Venom: Let There Be Carnage absolutely validates our exclusive theatrical window strategy," Sony Motion Pictures boss Josh Greenstein said. "If you look at the history of theatrical, the obituaries have been written many times, and they’ve always been wrong. We had confidence in the theatrical experience, confidence in our big valuable IP, and took full advantage and had the patience to weather all of this. That strategy is paying off, which we're happy about. It's a nice validation of the theatrical strategy."

Venom 2's $90 million opening is highest-ever opening weekend box office result during the pandemic and the second-highest opening weekend for October of all time. It only trails Joker, which made $96.2 million during its October 2019 opening weekend.

Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman added, "We are also pleased that patience and theatrical exclusivity have been rewarded with record results. With apologies to Mr. Twain: The death of movies has been greatly exaggerated."

The original Venom went on to make more than $850 million worldwide. Venom 2 currently stands at $103.9 million globally, including $13.8 million from international markets.

Like the original Venom, Venom 2 is not getting great review scores from professional critics. But it's faring much better with viewers, who scored the movie a B+ on CinemaScore, the same rating as the first movie.

Tom Hardy returns once again to play Eddie Brock/Venom, while Woody Harrelson joins the cast as Carnage. The movie is directed by Andy Serkis, who needs no introduction.