Venom may not have sat well with critics, as evidenced by its 29% on
Rotten Tomatoes, but fans of the extraterrestrial symbiote could not have disagreed more.
Venom blew past box office expectations to the tune of $855 million worldwide. While it failed to crack the top 10 domestically ($213.5M), a strong overseas showing ($641.5) pushed it to become the sixth highest-grossing movie of 2018 worldwide.
Venom's box office haul was a big contributor to the year-over-year growth of Sony Pictures. In announcing the third-quarter results of the fiscal year, which ended on December 31, 2018, Sony Pictures specifically noted the
"strong performance of Venom" as the main contributing factor for the 6% third-quarter sales growth year-over-year. Though not specifically mentioned, Sony's CGI animated hit
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse also played a key role with $225 million worldwide through December 31.
Sony Pictures reported $106.5 million (11.6 billion yen) in profits in Q3 2018, up from
the $93 million (10.5 billion yen) in Q3 2017. The prior year was driven by the success of
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (with some help from
Blade Runner 2049).
Sony is still estimated to hit $459 million (50B yen) in profit for the fiscal year, which ends March 31. And moving into the next fiscal year, Sony has another lineup of surefire blockbusters, including
Men in Black: International, Spider-Man: Far From Home, a sequel to
Jumanji, and more. Even further down the road, Sony has already
officially at work on a sequel to Venom.
One of Marvel's most enigmatic, complex and badass characters comes to the big screen, starring Academy Award® nominated actor Tom Hardy as the lethal protector Venom.
Venom is now available on home release.