Sony's Venom franchise just did something nobody saw coming

Venom is a wild card. He always has been in the pages of Marvel Comics, but that has rung even truer since he has been headlining his own movie franchise. He's unexpected, unpredictable, and completely unwilling to do anything but surprise us. And he does it, time and time again.

Sony's Venom movies aren't exactly critical masterpieces (all three have been negatively-received by critics) but they are audience sensations, with fans typically responding well to them. They know they aren't high art, but they are equally aware of the fact that the Tom Hardy-led movies are good old-fashioned entertainment. And in that department, nobody does it quite like Venom, promising the most outlandish and off-the-wall adventures you can imagine and, for the most part, delivering on that promise.

The third installment of the franchise, Venom: The Last Dance, was released in movie theaters this October and it (seemingly) brought the franchise to a close, with an emotional and emphatic conclusion to boot. But Venom being Venom, Sony's symbiote has surprised people once again in a rather unexpected way.

Venom 3 is the second-highest-grossing superhero movie of the year

While Venom: The Last Dance was expected to do rather well at the box office, it has continued to perform well for Sony ever since its release. In fact, it has ended up being one of this year's most consistent performers, not underperforming or outright flopping like some of the other films that have struggled this year. Granted, its going to finish as the lowest-grossing of the Venom trilogy, but that's okay, because it can afford to.

The film has grossed $456.4 million as of November 25, making it the tenth highest-grossing movie of the year. It won't hold onto that number, as Wicked and Gladiator 2 are already beginning to light up the box office, while Moana 2 is set to add more Disney sparkle to it in the coming days, but there is some surprise in it breaking onto that list; not because of its critical reception, but because of the, well, lack of competition that it should have faced from competitors in its genre.

The story here is that Venom 3 has overcome the fury of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - a sequel 36 years in the making that overperformed expectations and ended up grossing $451 million (almost $400 million more than its predecessor) - but if you look a little deeper, another surprise is that it ended up catapulting itself to the position of second-best performing comic book/superhero movie of the year.

Now, yes it's true that predecessor Venom: Let There Be Carnage did the same thing in 2021, but this isn't the same story as 2021. There was one comic book movie in particular that was expected to outperform Venom 3, but it didn't happen. That movie is, of course, DC's Joker: Folie à Deux, which catastrophically flopped in spite of the response to its billion-dollar Oscar-nominated predecessor.

Once upon a time, that movie was expected to rival Deadpool and Wolverine as this year's biggest comic book-based spectacular (especially as the Marvel Studios movie broke a ton of R-rated records set by the first Joker in 2019), but it just didn't happen. And that left the space wide open for Venom to defy expectations. Okay, it didn't really need to try that hard, but it did it nonetheless, and then kept going - breaking into this year's Top 10 for a hot minute

Two more superhero movies were supposed to release this year from Marvel Studios and that would have obviously created more competition for Venom but as those films (Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*) are now coming out next year, it didn't need to worry about them. It also didn't need to worry about fellow Sony Spider-Man movie Madame Web, which also underperformed at the box office earlier this year amid overwhelmingly negative reviews. And even though Kraven the Hunter could defy some expectations this year, it isn't expected to match the heights of Venom 3.

There you have it. Venom has once again surprised people. In a year that originally looked very different for the cinematic landscape, there could have been multiple Marvel Studios movies in the Top 10 best box-office performers of the year, Joker 2 could have performed to a level similar to that of its predecessor, and maybe even the former DCEU could have released some movies too. But none of that happened, clearing the path and allowing Venom: The Last Dance to recreate the success of its predecessor and close out the year as its second-highest-grossing superhero movie.

The power of Venom!