‘Venom 2’ Scores The Highest-Grossing Pandemic Opening Weekend With A $90 Million Debut

This weekend showed some impressive signs of life returning to the box office and that blockbusters remain the big draws for audiences both domestic and international. According to various box office reports (Gitesh Pandya for one), “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” surpassed “Black Widow” ($80.3 million) and the original “Venom” ($80.2 million) earning an estimated $90.1 million at the domestic box office. This makes the Sony Pictures film landing the best pandemic era domestic weekend since “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in December 2019. giving it a pandemic opening record.

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The numbers behind “Venom 2” suggest that Sony Pictures will continue grinding out sequels and should give the studio confidence about other upcoming pics such as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and Jared Leto‘s “Morbius.”

“Addams Family 2” was able to gather that younger/family demographic with the animated flick nabbing $18 million and Marvel‘s “Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings” was able to hold onto the Top 3 with $6 million. “Shang-Chi” hitting a milestone this weekend earning $206.1 million (the first film during the pandemic to cross $200 million domestically), with a healthy global total of $386.9 million.

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Sadly, “The Sopranos” movie “The Many Saints of Newark” only made $5 million, another weak outing for Warner Bros. Pictures, but then again it was available on HBO Max, which surely dulled the theatrical take. Hopefully, “Dune” and “The Matrix Resurrections” will turn things around for the studio giving them some good news at the box office, but again, they face the hurdle of their films available on streaming at the same time.

READ MORE: Tom Hardy Says ‘Venom’ Franchise Has To “Establish Ourselves” Before A ‘Spider-Man’ Crossover Can Happen

It’s also notable that festival darling “Titane” also cracked the Top 10, earning $516k at 562 theaters. Not a great per-screen average, but breaking into the top ten isn’t usually an easy feat for arthouse indies; even if they’ve won the Palme d’Or.

Ahead of their domestic releases, “No Time To Die” ($119.1 million) and “Dune” ($100.3 million) have both crossed $100 million-plus at the international box office, which bodes well for the big studio flicks doing well in the coming weeks in North America. “No Time To Die” made a whopping $35.2 million in the United Kingdom/Ireland alone, numbers bigger than pre-pandemic hits like “Skyfall” and Spectre.”

While the box office might not be where it was in 2019, things are slowly coming back, in a way.