Against all the odds, Venom has become a veritable smash hit. Despite fans at first turning their noses up at a movie for the character without Spider-Man and critics ripping it to shreds when it first came out, Ruben Fleischer’s Marvel spinoff starring Tom Hardy as the symbiote-bonded Eddie Brock continues to rake in the cash. In fact, it’s looking more and more likely that it’ll top every single one of Sony rival Fox’s own Marvel films.
You might be aware that 2016’s Deadpool is the most successful of Fox’s X-Men efforts, as the first solo outing for Ryan Reynolds’ mouthy antihero earned $783.1 million worldwide. Well, after its sizeable opening in China last week, Venom is currently sitting on $780 million. It’s got a few more weeks left to run in theaters over there, too, so if it just makes roughly $3 million more, it’ll have beaten Deadpool’s total and therefore, every Fox Marvel movie to date.
If it sails past that figure with ease, then the next milestone to reach will be $820 million, the worldwide gross of 2002’s Spider-Man. Even as it stands, Venom has already outperformed both The Amazing Spider-Man movies and will also overtake Spider-Man 2 if it reaches Deadpool‘s numbers. It’s unlikely to touch Spider-Man: Homecoming’s $860 million, though, and certainly won’t top Spider-Man 3‘s $890 million.
Still, the cash that it’s pulled in already is pretty impressive for a film that critics initially wrote off as a complete bust – one reviewer memorably described it as on a par with 2004’s Catwoman. However, fans leapt to its defense, citing Hardy’s performance, the humor and the weird odd couple vibe that Eddie and his parasitic other half had as highlights.
Venom ended on a big hook for a sequel, too, with Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kassidy spelling out pretty clearly that he was going to become Carnage in the follow-up. So, you can safely bet that Sony will starting work on that in the near future – if they haven’t already, that is.
