Tom Hardy’s $480 Million Blockbuster Is Being Barred for Some Netflix Users

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Tom Hardy sitting in a window seat in Venom The Last Dance

Rahul Malhotra is a Weekend News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he'll watch anything once.

He has been writing for Collider for over two years, and has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal to introduce audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

Swing and a miss > measured victory. Also, #JusticeForHan. (He/Him).

Sony's failed Spider-Man spin-off universe was an odd beast. Besides the three Venom hits, every other installment was both a critical and commercial disaster. With the studio having finally called the time of death on the franchise, after claiming that critics had it in for them the whole time, they're now focusing primarily on the animated Spider-Verse series and the live-action Spider-Man franchise starring Tom Holland. The spin-off series ended with Kraven the Hunter, but its last hit was Venom: The Last Dance — the third installment of the anti-hero franchise starring Tom Hardy. Although Venom 3 was the lowest-grossing entry of the trilogy, it grossed around five times as much as Kraven the Hunter at the global box office. The movie is currently streaming on Netflix, but it won't be available to every user.

Venom 3 is one of the 145 titles being blocked by Netflix this month for subscribers to its ad-supported tier. This is done mainly for rights reasons. The film was released in 2024 to mixed reviews, like its predecessors. It grossed around $480 million at the global box office, against a reported budget of $120 million. By comparison, the first Venom earned over $850 million globally in 2018, thanks to a phenomenal run in China. The movie was directed by Ruben Fleischer. Venom: Let There Be Carnage was released in 2021 and directed by Andy Serkis; it grossed over $500 million worldwide, but without China. Both films earned negative reviews, although the audience scores for the franchise have always been impressive.

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Directed by Kelly Marcel in her debut, Venom 3 is now sitting at a 40% critics' score and a 79% audience score on RT, where the consensus reads, "The always watchable Tom Hardy injects ample charisma into Venom: The Last Dance, but the offering buckles under its convoluted tonal ambitions." Sony's Spider-Man universe also included the disastrous Madame Web, Morbius, and Kraven the Hunter, which grossed a combined total of around $300 million worldwide, and earned uniformly terrible reviews. Hardy went on to star in the hit Paramount+ crime drama series MobLand, executive produced by Guy Ritchie. In the same year, he headlined the Netflix action film Havoc, directed by Gareth Evans.