Box office: ‘Venom’ is leggier than Spider-Man (and ‘Logan’) with $35.7M weekend

Sony’s Venom was the top movie of the weekend yet again, and it wasn’t even close. Thanks to kid-powered matinees, the Tom Hardy/Michelle Williams flick earned $35.7 million (-55%) in its second Fri-Sun frame, bringing its ten-day domestic total up to $142.8m. That second-weekend hold is actually better than the last three “opened on a Friday” Spider-Man movies (Spider-Man 3, Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming) and is about on par with Logan’s 56% second-weekend drop. It’s even slightly better than Annabelle’s 56% second-weekend drop. Point being, this ain’t an Annabelle/Insidious Chapter 2 (or Batman v Superman)-style one-weekend wonder.

If Venom opened last weekend like a lower-tier MCU movie, it held about as well as a conventional MCU flick. No, it’s not going to have legs like Guardians of the Galaxy, but it will still be the only PG-13, kid-targeted live-action biggie at least until Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald on Nov. 16. So, yes, alongside a flurry of adult movies and R-rated genre fare, Sony was correct to go with a PG-13 rating. If it merely holds like Logan from this point, then Ruben Fleischer’s Spider-Verse movie will end with around $210m domestic.