Box office: Oscar hopefuls ‘Conclave’ and ‘Anora’ thrive, ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ disappoints

The month of October was already plagued by how poorly “Joker: Folie à Deux” was bombing from week to week, so “Venom: The Last Dance” – once again teaming Tom Hardy with Marvel’s popular symbiote anti-hero – came along at just the right time… only to achieve similar results. Even so, the weekend delivered strong hopes that adult dramas may be making a comeback. Read on for the weekend box office report.

Maybe it wasn’t that surprising that reviews for Sony Pictures’ “Venom: The Last Dance” weren’t that good, worse than the second installment, landing at just 36% on Rotten Tomatoes by the time the film launched into 4,131 theaters. The Sony threequel would also have to take on the first two games of the 2024 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, potentially cutting into business in the country’s two largest moviegoing cities.

Despite making $8.5 million in Thursday previews, “Venom: The Last Dance” settled into just $22 million for its opening Friday (including previews), and Sony estimated “The Last Dance” to make $51 million over the weekend. That’s compared to the $80 and $90 million openings for the previous two “Venom” movies. Furthermore, “The Last Waltz” only received a “B-” CinemaSore, compared to the “B+” of the previous two movies, so clearly, the fans that did go see the movie didn’t like it as much.

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In fact, “The Last Dance” did far better overseas, making $124 million internationally with $46 million of that from China alone. That global opening of $175 million is a much better number compared to the movie’s domestic take.

Paramount’s horror sequel, “Smile 2,” took a drastic 59% drop in its second weekend – normally typical for horror films but a little worrying during “spooky season” – to take second place with an estimated $9.4 million. It has grossed $40.7 million domestically so far with little chance of it crossing the $100 million mark like the original movie.

Going by estimates, there was a veritable tie for third place with two movies making $6.5 million, the first of them being DreamWorks Animation’s animated “The Wild Robot,” which is estimated to drop 36% in its fifth weekend in theaters for a running total of $111.4 million.

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Focus Features opened Edward Berger‘s Vatican thriller, “Conclave,” starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, with a ton of advance Oscar buzz, into just 1,753 theaters, and that did well enough to challenge “Wild Robot” for third place. Granted, the movie came into the weekend with great reviews dating back to its festival premieres in September. “Conclave” made $500k in Thursday previews and then $2.5 million on Friday including those previews, allowing it to build on its buzz to rack up an estimated $6.5 million for the weekend. The Oscar hopeful received a “B+” CinemaScore from audiences.

A24 expanded its Andrew Garfield–Rebecca Pugh drama “We Live in Time” into 2,924 theaters on Friday to take advantage of how well it’s done in its previous two weeks. That was good enough to keep it in fifth place with $4.9 million, 16% higher than last weekend. It has grossed $11.8 million so far, another strong showing for adult-targeted drama in a market that seemed to have turned its back on movies for older moviegoers.

The only thing that might bump the A24 film out of the top five is Damien Leone‘s horror sequel “Terrifier 3,” estimated to make $4.8 million this weekend, which would put it in sixth place, down 49% in its third weekend. It has grossed $44.5 million in North America and over $50 million including overseas box office. Essentially, the top two movies at the box office are the only ones that are for certain, based on estimates.

The only other movie to make more than a million this weekend was Warner Bros’ massive fall hit, “Beetlejuice Beetljuice,” which added another $3.2 million (down 35%) to take seventh place and bring its domestic total to $288.7 million.

Sean Baker‘s “Anora” expanded into 34 theaters on Friday, and it ended up making $867,000, an average of $25,504 per theater, which was enough for it to break into the top 10 in eighth place. In fact, it did better this weekend than two animated films in wider release, “Piece by Piece” and “Transformers One,” which both had large drops to roughly $720,000 each. With $1.6 million grossed in just ten days, we’ll definitely want to keep an eye on how Neon expands “Anora” over the next few weeks.

Vertical ended up giving Melisa Barrera‘s “Your Monster” a wide release into 651 theaters on Friday where it earned $515,000, averaging just $791 per theater.

IFC Films platformed Adam Elliot‘s stop-motion animated “Memoir of a Snail” into just five theaters in New York and L.A. where it made $69,000, averaging $13,800 per theater.

Practically every player in this week’s box office prediction game knew that “Venom” would win the weekend; they were almost equally split between over or under $75 million. With the movie’s estimate not being too far above $50 million, the 10 players that predicted between $25 and $50 million might be hoping that Sony overestimated. Only nine players picked “Conclave” for third place, so if that prevails over “The Wild Robot,” that small group will be happy, and only 12 players kept “We Live in Time” in fifth place, but that might also be too close to call.

“Exdee” was the only player to get a perfect score in the Oct. 18 game with the best score of 56,221 points, by putting his Super Bet on “We Live in Time” taking fifth place. “Holo” was the other player to make that same move and got the points to show for it.

This coming week, we’ll have a November preview on Tuesday and then the weekend preview on Wednesday, the latter mainly focuses on the “Forrest Gump” reunion taking place in Robert Zemeckis‘ “Here.”

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