Venom: The Last Dance” showed less bite than expected at the box office, collecting $51 million in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, significantly down from

Venom: The Last Dance” is two-stepping slower than its series predecessors in North America, after chowing down on $22 million from 4,131 domestic theaters across Friday and previews. That’s well below the first-day debuts of both the first “Venom” in 2018 ($32 million) and its 2021 sequel “Let There Be Carnage” ($37 million).

The month of October was already plagued by how poorly “Joker: Folie à Deux” was bombing from week to week, so “Venom: The Last Dance” – once again teaming Tom Hardy with Marvel’s popular symbiote anti-hero – came along at just the right