Six years ago, Sony discovered a new Marvel box office hit, “Venom,” starring Tom Hardy as Spider-Man’s nemesis-turned-sinister anti-hero and winning over audiences with a mood that surprised everyone.

Now, after a successful sequel in 2021, cinemas are getting the trilogy conclusion “Venom: The Last Dance”, which will try to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors and win over fans despite leaving critics with a 40 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating leaves you unimpressed. And it shows once again that the franchise is the most successful IP in Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff universe, which has otherwise struggled theatrically.

At a time when the budgets of many tentpole films, including the recent flop “Joker: Folie a Deux,” have become ever-increasing, Sony and Columbia Pictures have kept “Venom 3” at a relatively low $120 million before marketing costs . That’s a good thing, as the film is currently expected to gross $65 million in its opening weekend, which is less than the $80 million opening of the first “Venom” and the $90 million opening of the sequel.” Let There Be Carnage.” Sony’s global projections are $150 million.

“Let There Be Carnage” hit theaters three years ago, at a time when theaters were struggling to get back on their feet after the pandemic. The total of $213 million domestic and $506 million worldwide was a pretty impressive achievement. The first “Venom” grossed a surprising $856 million worldwide, although much of that came from the $269 million production in China, a country whose audiences have now largely abandoned Hollywood imports.

Regardless of how it got there, “Venom” was the standout success in Sony’s three-pronged Marvel strategy. In addition to the Tom Holland-directed Spider-Man films produced by Marvel Studios and the animated Spider-Verse trilogy, Venom is one of several attempts by Sony to make films based on Spider-Man characters to which Sony owns the IP rights.

While “Morbius” broke even in theaters and “Madame Web” was a flop – both panned by critics and audiences – “Venom” benefited from the popularity of its lead character at a time when interest in Marvel was waning in the midst of the Infinity Saga MCU was still big. Hardy’s darkly comedic take on the character sustained that interest and made Let There Be Carnage a promise of the cinematic fun that audiences had been missing while stuck at home.

“It’s almost ironic that Sony happened to release ‘Venom’ first and thought it could be reproduced, but it’s not that simple,” Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock told TheWrap. “Venom is one of the best and most recognizable Spidey characters, and word of mouth has been so strong that we’ve seen really strong walk-ups in the first two films. It wouldn’t surprise me if The Last Dance did that again.”

To achieve the box office success of “Venom 2,” the third installment will have to do without Carnage, the villain from the second film after which it is named. Carnage, played by Woody Harrelson, became Venom’s most famous adversary after making the leap from villain to anti-hero in the Marvel comics, and was a big part of the sequel’s appeal among fans.

“The Last Dance” has new villains, most notably Knull, the creator of Venom and all other symbiotes. But unlike “Carnage,” that’s not the main marketing selling point.

Instead, Sony has focused on the relationship between Venom and its human host Eddie Brock, which fans have embraced with the name “Symbrock,” so much so that Sony addressed it with a romantic comedy-inspired commercial for the first “Venom.” Blu-Ray released. “Let There Be Carnage” then focused more on the campy but sincere nature of the relationship between Venom and Eddie as they work through their differences.

The trailers for The Last Dance have hinted that Eddie and Venom’s time together may be coming to an end. Whether that is ultimately the case is the question at the heart of the film.

With films like Joker 2, The Marvels and Shazam! Fury of the Gods among the comic book sequels failing to deliver at the box office, it’s clear that audiences are giving up on a film from the once-bulletproof genre if the quality is not right. Conversely, hits like “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” have each stood out in the minds of viewers and shown that they are more than just another Superhero films are.

Is the promise of more symbiote shenanigans, independent of the actual plot, enough to satisfy the biggest “Venom” fans and generate the post-release buzz needed to sustain the film in the coming weeks? A starting price of $65 million is lower than its predecessors, but would be a good starting point for “Venom 3” to make a box office profit. But it will be for naught if the moviegoers who came to see “Carnage” after a year in quarantine are so numerous that they are full.

In the arthouse space, Focus Features is releasing its Oscar contender “Conclave” in 1,750 theaters. Directed by Edward Berger, his follow-up to the award-winning adaptation of All Things New to the West stars Ralph Fiennes as a cardinal tasked by the Catholic Church with simply overseeing the election of the next pope in order to uncover a shocking conspiracy.

The film is currently slated for an opening weekend of $4 million to $6 million and was produced by FilmNation on a budget of $20 million. Focus acquired the film’s domestic rights last year. The premiere took place at TIFF in September.

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