Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth has revealed a cold hard fact: Venom just beat her and Peter Parker at the box office.
Venom is apparently not done crushing other superheroes. Sony's Marvel Universe movie opened in early October, and it is slowing down on the domestic front -- only taking #15 on the Thanksgiving holiday weekend box office chart. But that was enough to push it past both Wonder Woman and Tobey Maguire's 2002 Spider-Man in terms of total gross.
Wonder Woman came out in June 2017 and earned a total of $821,847,012 at the worldwide box office. That came from a fairly even split between the $412.5 million domestic gross and the $409 million foreign gross. Spider-Man had a similar set-up: $403M domestic, $418M foreign, $821.7M total. It worked differently for Venom, which has seen HUGE foreign numbers, giving it the overall edge.
Venom currently has a worldwide total of $822,507,620. That is from "only" $211.7 million at the domestic box office and a massive $610.8 million at the foreign box office. Whatever Tom Hardy is doing, they are L-O-V-I-N-G it around the world, especially in China. Seriously, more than $205 million of the foreign gross was from China alone. That nearly rivals the entire domestic gross at this point.
It was only two weeks ago that Venom passed Wonder Woman's other DC film, Justice League, at the box office. Could there be more superhero domination ahead? Could Venom threaten Batman v Superman's worldwide total of $873,634,919? Eh. Maybe? So far, Spider-Man 3 seems safe with its worldwide gross of $890,871,626.
Tom Holland's first MCU Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming, straddles the Sony/Marvel line and it's currently pretty far ahead of Venom with $880,166,924 worldwide. Venom easily passed Ant-Man and the Wasp in worldwide grosses, but it's still nowhere near 2018 MCU heavy hitters Avengers: Infinity War or Black Panther. That said, Venom could top Black Panther at the foreign box office, since Black Panther made $646.8M there vs. Venom's current $610.8M. But Black Panther has a worldwide total of $1.3 billion, and that is out of Venom's reach.
Sony has to be very proud of Venom for helping them reach new milestones. So it's no surprise that Sony has already dated two more Sony-Marvel projects for 2020. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say.
It's clear, though, that the North American box office wasn't as charmed by Venom as the rest of the world. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, appealed pretty equally in that respect. Director Patty Jenkins, star Gal Gadot, and -- somehow -- co-star Chris Pine will return for the sequel Wonder Woman 1984, which is currently scheduled to open in theaters on June 5, 2020.
There's a very good chance Wonder Woman 1984 will be in theaters competing against one of Sony's upcoming Marvel projects, which is scheduled for July 10, 2020. Maybe a rematch is in order? Before that happens, Tom Holland will be back for his second solo film in Spider-Man: Far From Home, which opens July 5, 2019.
In the meantime, there's still plenty ahead to watch in theaters in 2018, plus a ton of good stuff coming in 2019.
