Coming out in just a few days, Venom is going to be the next big thing at the Box Office as it does promise potentially successful returns. The expectations for the first weekend are pretty damn high as they lie between $55-85 Million at the Domestic Box Office. So, Sony could be looking at $650-700 Million+ at the end of its Box Office run worldwide. But, a lot of that will depend upon the quality of the film. That will decide whether the movie has legs to stand at the Box Office.
If you consider a movie like Mission: Impossible – Fallout, it began with only $61.5 Million for its opening weekend coming out on July 27 and moving into October, it could be looking to end its Box Office run with $790-800 Million Plus in the bank. So, that is massive profitability and success for a high budget movie. It got an insanely high critical acclaim getting a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Review Embargo of the film was lifted a week ago and seeing the amazing critical review and the word of mouth, the movie had pretty strong legs for weeks to come in, even after facing a lot of competition. The Box Office numbers just didn’t take a steep drop in any week.
An even better example of this is Black Panther, which is now a global cultural phenomenon. It got a Rotten Tomatoes score of 97% and then went on to make $700 Million domestically and $1.3 Billion+ worldwide. So having a great review embargo helps the movie in massive ways. Infinity War got only 83% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but it was an Avengers movie which people were desperately waiting for, so it had to make $2 Billion+. But for movies like Venom, the reviews do count.
Sony has decided that the Review Embargo for Venom will lift just 2 days before the film comes out, so we wouldn’t know the Rotten Tomatoes score until tomorrow. Well, that is not a sign of confidence from the studios. All the studios that have done this in the past have failed in the longer run.
Both BvS and Suicide Squad got poor scores on Rotten Tomatoes, their Box Office numbers were massively impacted as they did not have legs to stand on in the coming weeks. So to prevent that, WB decided to let the embargo lift when the film comes out. As it turned out, the film ended up being the lowest money-making movie in the entire DCEU, and did not even break even a pure profit for WB.
So, this move by Sony does give us a hint that they might not be very confident about the quality of the film. Studios that are confident with what they have made let their embargo’s lift around 5-7 days prior to the theatrical release of the film. Unless there is a massive plot point that Sony wants to hide here (which is highly unlikely as the marketing campaign has given away the entire film in bits and pieces), we do get the signal that the quality of the film may not be as good.
But then again, if the score does turn out to be good, then it would surely help the movie greatly, and the sales could actually boost with this 2-day cushion. If it turns out bad, then the Box Office numbers could be impacted in the longer run. But let’s stay optimistic and judge the movie by seeing it on our own.
Venom is a beloved character, and the entire cast of the film has admitted that they have created something that they are proud of. They have worked hard for doing that, and Tom Hardy himself mentioned that the crew of Vemon focused more on the specificity of the character and wanted to get it right. The trailers do seem to show that, but let’s wait for the critical verdict as well. Also, the movie will have 2 Post Credits scenes, so do make sure that you stay till the very end.
Venom comes out on October 5. Directed by Ruben Fleischer from a script by Jeff Pinkner & Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel, the film stars Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, Reid Scott, Jenny Slate, Ron Cephas Jones, and Woody Harrelson.
