Earlier this week, the first reactions to the new Venom movie surfaced via social media and man, were they painful to read, with the film’s subsequent Rotten Tomatoes score confirming that these negative reviews were more than just the isolated opinions of a handful of individuals.
Nonetheless, defenders of Eddie Brock and his first solo outing insisted that these harsher critical responses were being blown out of proportion, with the pic’s box office numbers backing that up, too. Indeed, Venom is tracking quite well at the moment, with Deadline predicting a $60-$65 million opening weekend domestically, while overseas it could earn anywhere from $100 to $110 million.
Not only that, but apparently the film’s performing strongly in terms of advance tickets sales, too. According to Atom Tickets, it’s already outselling MCU movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Ant-Man and the Wasp. True, those aren’t exactly three of the franchise’s heaviest hitters, but they all did pretty well for themselves.
That’s got to make Sony feel a bit better, but it still remains to be seen how Venom will finish off its theatrical run when all is said and done. A strong opening weekend is one thing, but will it be able to sustain that momentum once more negative reviews surface and word of mouth starts circulating? That remains to be seen, but it does seem like the inaugural outing of the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters (which I guess we’re going to have to call the SUoMC) is on shakier ground than the studio would like.
After all, Venom‘s intended to launch a kind of B-class MCU concerned with the characters that the studio still has rights to, which is why we’re getting movies starring Morbius, Kraven the Hunter and more real soon. But if this first effort proves to be a flop, Sony may be forced to pull a Warner Bros. style mea culpa and change direction.