Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage rang up a great $11.6M Thursday night from showtimes that began at 4PM yesterday at 3,475 theaters. That’s the second best we’ve seen during the pandemic after Disney/Marvel’s Black Widow which grossed $13.2M on Thursday night from shows that began at 5PM (sans Disney+ Premier for the night).
Disney/Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings follows in ranking among big pandemic Thursday nights with $8.8M from showtimes at 6 p.m., and then Universal’s F9 which did $7.1M off 7PM showtimes.
We had previously heard that the first day advance ticket sales for Andy Serkis-directed movie were quite potent. The current Rotten Tomatoes’ review rating for Venom 2 is at 58% Rotten, which is higher than the 2018’s first installment of 30% Rotten. We’ll see how audience exits settle. They’re always high with fans on Thursday night and even out by tonight. Fans at an AMC Universal Citywalk screening Monday night went bonkers for the Tom Hardy sequel.
Sony has told the media that they’re comping the sequel to A Quiet Place Part II which did $47.5M over its 3 days of Memorial Day weekend, however, other tracking services and even major exhibitors’ own internal projections have Venom 2 over $60M. Venom 2 is already far ahead of A Quiet Place 2 with its preview night making 2.4x more than that horror film which did $4.8M.
MGM/United Artists Releasing/Bron Creative’s The Addams Family 2 held previews that began at 4pm. The pic is booked at 4,207 locations and available for a 48-hour rental on PVOD for $19.99. The pic is expected to gross in the high teens over three days. The first movie back in 2019, also directed by Conrad Vernon and which was on a theatrical window, opened to $24.2M. We hear that Addams Family 2 did $550K last night from roughly 2,500 theaters.
Voltage Pictures’ had two special showings of YA romance threequel After We Fell which collected a solid $627K from both the 7pm and 10pm Fathom Events shows.
Warner Bros.’ The Many Saints of Newark which is going day-and-date theatrical on HBO Max did not hold Thursday night previews.
Disney’s Shang-Chi grossed over $200M yesterday, the first movie at the domestic box office to reach that feat during the pandemic of the last 20 months. We already reported a week ago that the MCU title surpassed Black Widow to becomes the highest grossing movie of the pandemic in U.S. and Canada.