The new “Venom” film scored a record-breaking hit at the box office. According to Deadline, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” grossed $90.1 million in North American cinemas between Friday and Sunday, making it the largest weekend for any film since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The previous record was held by another Marvel comics-based picture, Disney’s “Black Widow,” which grossed more than $80 million in its opening weekend in July. The “Venom” sequel also outperformed the franchise’s debut film, which grossed $80.2 million in its opening weekend in 2018.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist who develops superhuman abilities after becoming the host body for the extraterrestrial symbiote Venom.
The Sony-distributed picture, directed by Andy Serkis, also stars Woody Harrelson as Cletus Kasady, a serial murderer whose body gets connected with another symbiote, Carnage, and Naomi Harris as his super-powered girlfriend, Shriek. The release of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” was delayed and rescheduled several times due to the outbreak. Sony has pushed up the release date by two weeks to October 1.
Another sequel, the animated “The Addams Family 2,” came in second at the American box office during the weekend, grossing $18 million. That film, which was released in theatres and on premium video on demand on Friday, boasts a voice cast that includes Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac, and Chlo Grace Moretz.
The success of “Venom” interrupts a four-weekend winning run for another superhero picture, Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which just became the only film to gross more than $200 million in North American cinemas during the outbreak.
The highly anticipated James Bond film “No Time to Die” will be released in theatres on October 8. The film is the 25th canonical instalment in the 007 series, and the fifth and last film starring Daniel Craig as the suave MI6 agent.
