The story of Venom must be downright inspiring to anyone who actually likes this film. Despite getting trashed by the critics, Eddie Brock’s first standalone flick overcame its bad buzz (and allegedly, a little opposition from Lady Gaga fans) and launched with a record-breaking opening weekend. Since then, the symbiote’s franchise-starting feature has continued to go strong at the box office, and at this rate, it could ultimately be more profitable than any of his old foe Spider-Man’s solo outings.
Forbes reports a current global gross for the Ruben Fleischer-helmed film of $508 million, and against a budget of $100 million, that makes for a multiplier of 5.08x. While it’s unlikely at this point that the movie will top the total gross of the web-slinger’s most popular features, it does seem on course to make proportionally more from its budget.
To compare, the most profitable Spider-Man movie thus far is the 2002 film, with Sam Raimi’s trilogy-starter taking in $822 million on a $139 million budget. This yields a multiplier of 5.91x, which still leaves Venom with some way to go. Nonetheless, with the new Sony release projected to eventually rake in at least $630 million, there’s an excellent chance that the flick’s eventual multiplier will go well beyond the 6x mark.
In fact, Venom has already proved more profitable than last year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming (5.03x) despite not boasting the same MCU connections, and has comfortably soared past all other standalone releases from the hero. For those curious, last place was 2014’s less-than-beloved The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which yielded a multiplier of just 2.78x.
In case it still needed to be said, there’s almost no way Sony isn’t giving Venom a sequel at this point. As for whether Tom Hardy’s Eddie could ever come face to face with the web-slinger himself, the public demand is certainly there, but you probably shouldn’t hold your breath.