‘Venom 3’ Tops Box Office Again, While Tom Hanks Film Struggles

“Venom: The Last Dance” enjoyed another weekend at the top of the box office. The Sony release starring Tom Hardy added $26.1 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
It was a relatively quiet weekend for North American movie theaters leading up to the presidential election. Charts were dominated by big studio holdovers, like “Venom 3,” “The Wild Robot” and “Smile 2,” while audiences roundly rejected the Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Robert Zemeckis reunion “Here.” Thirty years after “Forrest Gump,” “Here” opened to only $5 million from 2,647 locations.
“Venom 3” only fell 49% in its second weekend, which is a notably small drop for a superhero film, though it didn’t exactly open like one either. In two weeks, the movie has made over $90 million domestically; The first two opened to over $80 million. Globally, the picture is brighter given that it has already crossed the $300 million threshold.
Meanwhile, Universal and Illumination’s “The Wild Robot” continues to attract moviegoers even six weeks in (and when it’s available by video on demand), placing second with $7.6 million. That's up 11% from last weekend. The animated charmer has made over $121 million in North America and $269 million worldwide, The Associated Press reported.
"'The Wild Robot' has quietly been this absolute juggernaut for the fall season," said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “For that film to see an increase after six weeks is astounding.”
“Smile 2” landed in third place with $6.8 million, helping to push its worldwide total to $109.7 million.
The time-hopping “Here,” a graphic novel that was adapted by “Forrest Gump” screenwriter Eric Roth, was financed by Miramax and distributed by Sony’s TriStar. With a fixed position camera, it takes audiences through the years in one living room. Critics were not on board: In aggregate it has a lousy 36% on Rotten Tomatoes.
“It was a slow weekend anyway, but it didn’t resonate in a way that many thought it might," Dergarabedian said. "There are a lot of films out there for the audience that ‘Here’ was chasing."
Despite playing in almost 1,000 more locations, “Here” came in behind Focus Features' papal thriller “Conclave,” which earned $5.3 million. Playing in 1,796 theaters, “Conclave” dropped only 20% from its debut last weekend and has made $15.2 million so far. Two Indian films also cracked the top 10 in their debuts, “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3” and “Singham Again.”
Overall box office continues to lag behind 2023 by almost 12%. But holiday moviegoing will likely give the industry an end-of-year boost with titles like “Gladiator II” and “Wicked” on the way.
“In a couple of weeks, it’ll get a lot more competitive,” Dergarabedian said.
Jesse Eisenberg’s film “A Real Pain,” a comedic drama about cousins on a Holocaust tour in Poland, launched in four theaters this weekend in New York and Los Angeles. It made an estimated $240,000, or $60,000 per screen, which is among the top three highest per theater averages of the year. Searchlight Pictures will be expanding the well-reviewed film nationwide in the coming weeks, going wide on Nov. 15 to over 800 theaters.
Box office charts don’t always paint a full picture of the moviegoing landscape, however. This weekend several relatively high-profile films playing in theaters did not report full grosses for various reasons, including the Clint Eastwood film “Juror #2,” Steve McQueen’s WWII film “Blitz” and the Cannes darling “Emilia Pérez.” Netflix, which is handling “Emilia Pérez,” never reports box office. Apple Original Films is following suit with “Blitz,” a likely awards contender, which is in theaters before hitting Apple TV+ on Nov. 22.
“Juror No. 2” is a Warner Bros. release, and a well-reviewed one at that. The film directed by Eastwood stars Nicholas Hoult as a juror on a murder case who faces a big moral dilemma. Domestic ticket sales were withheld. The studio did say that it earned $5 million from international showings, where it played on 1,348 screens.
Even major studios withhold box office numbers occasionally. Earlier this year, Disney did not report on the Daisy Ridley movie “Young Woman and the Sea.” Results were most notably withheld during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It’s really up to the distributors," Dergarabedian said. “Often times the reason that certain movies may not be reported is that there’s a chance that the quality of the movie will be conflated with the box office number.”

Oscar winner Steve McQueen had long wanted to make a movie about the Blitz - Germany's wartime aerial bombing of British cities - but it was seeing a photo of a Black boy waiting to be evacuated that inspired him to explore the theme through a child's eyes.

His film "Blitz" is based on thorough research and true events, the British director of "12 Years a Slave" and "Hunger" told Reuters in an interview.

While researching another project, he came across the photo of the boy at a train station - one of hundreds of thousands of British children to be evacuated from towns and cities during World War Two.

The film stars Saoirse Ronan as Rita, a Londoner who sends her son George, played by newcomer Elliott Heffernan, to the countryside for safety during the war. But George is determined to return home despite the dangers ahead.

Many of the characters and events George encounters are based on extensive research and documented by author Joshua Levine, who joined the project as a historical adviser, said McQueen.

"I thought, 'you've got to get it right'," McQueen said.

"In fact, the research sort of just propelled me and inspired me to the story and George's odyssey through London at that time. It was exciting because you found all these characters, all these facts, which most people unfortunately didn't know, and you want to sort of illuminate them on screen."

The Blitz - from the German word Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war" - lasted from Sept. 1940 until May 1941. For Britons it conjures up images of Londoners huddling in underground shelters and rallying to battle blazes and rescue people from the rubble.

McQueen said he had discovered a diverse, "quite cosmopolitan" London through his research.

"There was a large Chinese community and there was a Black presence. There was all kinds of presence here in London. I wasn't trying to push some kind of narrative. It was just what one found within the sort of everyday of London," he said.

Like George, 11-year-old Heffernan embarked on a transformative journey with the movie.

"It was a big adventure being on my first film, seeing how films are made and going out on different locations," said Heffernan, who was nine at the time of shooting.

The movie also proved new territory for four-time Oscar-nominee Ronan, who spent months working with a vocal coach to prepare for scenes which see her singing live.

"It's the kind of thing I've always been terrified to do in front of everyone, but I've always wanted to do it," Ronan, 30, told Reuters.

"It was incredible to see how strong you can become at something that you're just not a professional at after a few months. It gave me a lot of confidence."

"Blitz" is out in select cinemas on Nov. 1 and will stream on Apple TV+ from Nov. 22.

‘Venom 3’ Tops Box Office Again, While Tom Hanks Film Struggles