Sony may have bitten off more than it can chew when it comes to the live-action Spider-Verse. Even before the first Venom sank its teeth into $856 million at the global box office, spawning the franchise that became known as Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters, the studio announced plans to mine its 900-character pact with Disney-owned Marvel. By 2018, Sony had begun developing spinoffs starring Spider-Man villains Morbius, Kraven the Hunter, and Silver Sable, with plans for Black Cat, Jackpot, Silk, and Nightwatch, a lesser-known character with a dozen appearances in Spider-Man comic books.
But then 2022’s Morbius, starring Jared Leto as the living vampire, and 2024’s Madame Web, led by Dakota Johnson as the clairvoyant Cassandra Webb, both bombed at the box office. (Morbius actually flopped twice after Sony re-released the film into 1,000 theaters in an attempt to capitalize on social media memes.) Morbius ($167 million worldwide) and Madame Web ($100 million worldwide) effectively wiped out plans for characters that, like Tom Hardy’s Venom, the studio hoped would anchor their own trilogies in the SSU (the rechristened Sony’s Spider-Man Universe). And El Muerto, once planned with Bad Bunny in the title role, is effectively dead.
[RELATED: Who Is Venom 3 Villain Knull? Explaining the King in Black]
Venom: The Last Dance, the third and final installment in the trilogy, opened to a franchise low $51 million at the box office this weekend, which is better than Joker 2‘s disastrous $37.6 million opening weekend earlier this month but worse than the $67 million that the Dwayne Johnson-fronted Black Adam earned over the same weekend in 2022. The DC movie received a similar Rotten Tomatoes score (39%) and went on to finish its run with $390 million globally.
Venom 3 is off to a global start of $175 million, meaning Sony has already recouped its $120 million price tag (not accounting for marketing costs). Industry projections initially had the movie opening domestically at upwards of $70 million — down from the $80 million of 2018’s Venom and the $90 million of 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage — before dropping to $65 million in the days before Thursday previews. The original Venom held the record for the biggest October opening weekend with $205.5 million until it was surpassed by Joker a year later, and went on to earn $856.1 million worldwide; Venom 2 managed to gross $506.9 million globally despite releasing mid-pandemic in 2021.
Why the diminishing returns? The Venom 3 Rotten Tomatoes score is above average for the SSU at 37% — better than Venom (30%), Morbius (15%), and Madame Web (11%), lower than only Venom 2 (57%) — but the film received a B- grade from opening night moviegoers polled by CinemaScore (Venom and Venom 2 both earned a B+ grade). That’s on par with 1986’s Howard the Duck, 2003’s Hulk, 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and 2024’s The Crow. (To compare, the much-maligned superhero movies Elektra, Catwoman, Green Lantern, and The Marvels received a B grade.)
What began as an attempt at its own Marvel Cinematic Universe and an interconnected continuity didn’t pan out: aside from a mention of Venom in Morbius or Michael Keaton’s Vulture teasing a crossover that is unlikely to come to pass, the Spider-Man-less universe has been mostly standalone. Which is why it’s bizarre that Venom 3 introduces Knull, the god of the symbiotes, a Thanos-like villain in the Marvel comics who is set up to return despite Hardy declaring this to be his final Venom movie. It’s unclear if this plot thread will continue elsewhere in the SSU, or if Sony Pictures is planning another inter-company crossover by bringing Hardy or Knull into the MCU to battle Tom Holland’s wallcrawler in Spider-Man 4.
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Sony will release its third Marvel-based movie this year, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven the Hunter, in December. The R-rated action movie, which is reportedly bloodier and more violent than Deadpool & Wolverine, is being positioned as counter programming for the two family-friendly movies that will release one week later: Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The J.C. Chandor-directed Kraven could dethrone 2004’s Meet the Fockers for the highest-grossing R-rated December opening ($46.1 million), and with a reported budget of $130 million, it would need to
gross at least $325 million before beginning to become profitable.
Can a non-Venom Sony-Marvel movie reach those numbers in this climate? It seems that Venom 3, in part, paid for the sins of Morbius and Madame Web, both rejected by critics and audiences alike (each received a C+ grade on CinemaScore). So far, Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine is the only comic book-based hit of the year with a global haul of $1.37 billion, while Madame Web ($100 million worldwide) and Joker: Folie à Deux ($201 million worldwide) limped over their respective box office milestones.
The SSU has had a symbiotic relationship with the MCU since Venom 2 and Morbius made half-hearted attempt to link the two universes through the multiverse — but with nothing officially announced after Kraven, it seems Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is about to take a bow on its last dance.
Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange), Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spider-Man), Alanna Ubach (Euphoria), Peggy Lu (reprising her role as Mrs. Chen), and Stephen Graham (reprising his Venom 2 role as Detective Mulligan), Venom: The Last Dance is now playing in theaters.