Venom 3 tops US BO; Singham Again, BB3 among Top 10

“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 theatres 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 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 theatres, “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.” The Ajay Devgn starrer came in 8th on the list, earning an estimated $2.1 million. The Kartik Aaryan horror-comedy, on the other hand, rounded off the top 10 list by earning an estimated $2 million. The Bollywood films that clashed at the box office over the extended Diwali weekend, went on to score Rs 100 crore openings in India. Both films managed to cross the Rs 100 crore mark on their debut weekend at the Indian box office.
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 theatres 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 theatre 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 theatres.
Box office charts don’t always paint a full picture of the moviegoing landscape, however. This weekend several relatively high-profile films playing in theatres 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 Perez.” Netflix, which is handling “Emilia Perez,” never reports box office. Apple Original Films is following suit with “Blitz,” a likely awards contender, which is in theatres 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.”
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Comscore, were:
1. “Venom: The Last Dance,” $26.1 million.
2. “The Wild Robot,” $7.6 million.
3. “Smile 2,” $6.8 million.
4. “Conclave,” $5.3 million.
5. “Here,” $5 million.
6. “We Live In Time,” $3.5 million.
7. “Terrifier 3,” $3.4 million.
8. “Singham Again,” $2.1 million.
9. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” $2.1 million.
10. “Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3,” $2 million.