Venom: The Last Dance may not have made as big a splash at the box office as the previous movies in the franchise, but the final part of Sony Pictures' trilogy is proving difficult to knock off the top spot.
The Last Dance took in $16.2 million from 3,905 North American theaters, which was enough to fend off competition from A24’s horror thriller Heretic and Lionsgate’s family friendly The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
The studio's latest SSU movie - which sits at 41% on Rotten Tomatoes - has now grossed $279.4 million overseas and $394.2 million globally on a relatively modest budget of $120 million.
This might well be the last Venom movie, but a recent rumor claimed that Sony is developing an Agent Venom film.
In the comics, Agent Venom was Peter Parker's former bully turned friend Eugene "Flash" Thompson, who bonded with the Venom Symbiote after losing his legs in service of his country. Tony Revolori currently plays Flash in the Spider-Man movies, but The Last Dance may have given us some idea of how Sony intends to introduce a whole new take on the character.
If you haven't seen The Last Dance yet, be warned of major spoilers from this point on.
As Venom sacrifices himself to prevent Knull from invading the planet, we see one of the Xenophages eating the legs of one of Strickland's soldiers, whose last name is given as Thompson. Then, in the post-credits scene, we see a cockroach near a broken vial that had previously been used to house a viral shed of the symbiote.
In other box office news, Red One starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans opened overseas this weekend ahead of its US debut next week, and only managed to take in $26.6 million from 25,195 screens across 75 overseas markets (the movie had a reported budget of just under $250 million).
“Eddie and Venom are on the run," reads the synopsis. "Hunted by both their worlds and with net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtain down on Venom and Eddie’s last day”
In addition to Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road; The Dark Knight Rises) in his dual roles as Eddie Brock and the voice of the Venom symbiote, the supporting cast features Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave; Doctor Strange), Juno Temple (Atonement; Ted Lasso), Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill; The Amazing Spider-Man), Peggy Lu (Venom; Crazy Rich Asians), Alanna Ubach (Legally Blonde; Coco), Stephen Graham (The Irishman; Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides), Clark Backo (Supernatural; The Changeling), and Cristo Fernández (Ted Lasso; Spider-Man: No Way Home).