UPDATED FINAL SUNDAY NOON from @TheNumbers feed.

A lot of things are distracting America from the idea of “We MUST go see the third ‘Venom’ movie” this weekend.

Baseball’s World Series, other sports, fall leaves reaching their “peak” and politics join Comic Book Film Fatigue in pushing the opening take of “Venom: The Last Dance” down into the still-robust but low for the genre and the franchise $51 million. Deadline.com notes that the exit tracking from Thursday night and Friday’s showings are below the first two “Venom” movies.

Reviews have been bad to just brutal.

As Box Office Mojo reminds us, “Venom: Let There be Carnage” opened at a whopping $90 million in post-pandmeic 2021. The first of the Tom-Hardy Marvel anti-hero action comedies arrived to some $80 million in ticket sales back in 2018.

Projections had been in the $65 million range, because even Sony knew they didn’t have the goods, that the franchise was toast and that the whole comic book movie thing is running on fumes.

Don’t blame “Dodgers v. Yankees” for audiences being kind of over the franchise. Last summer’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” was an outlier, pairing up two beloved actors/characters for a one-off that all but sends off the genre’s days of “biggest box office ever” contests every year. The bell is tolling.

The film is making decent money overseas, which means no red ink.

The wider audience may have little interest in another Captain America movie or Florence Pugh in that “Thunderbolts” spin-off that was pushed back from last summer to next summer. Outside of ComicCon, who’s all jazzed for another “Superman” (next summer) or Robert Pattinson “Batman” outing (2026)?

“Smile 2” is not showing the legs that “Smile” did, losing well over half its lower-than-expected opening weekend audience for a $9.4 million or so take. Being slightly better than the first “Smile” can’t hide the fact that “Smile” came out less than two years ago.

“The Wild Robot” is still enjoying that all-alone-in-the-family-movie (animated) marketplace advantage, plugging along with another $6 million. It’ll be over $110 by Monday AM, not animated blockbuster numbers, but it’s a good movie that is sticking around in a fall characterized by slack competition.

But the new, higher-minded papacy thriller “Conclave” is opening on a limited number of screens and Ralph Fiennes is pulling in over $6.5 million in clerical robes.

“Terrifier 3” is right on those two film’s heels — $5.5 million projected, with a possibility of climbing over $6. It’s earned $41 million, all-in.

That pushes the Florence Pugh/Andrew Garfield romantic weeper “We Live in Time” out of the top five. It expanded its release, doubling the number of theater screens, and is still managing to only slightly best its opening weekend take of $5 million or so. It’s not all that, but being great counter-programming and a “date movie” with stars who have comic book film exposure attached to them is giving it a boost. It looks like this one will clear $20-25 once all is said and done and it fades from screens next month.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is still in the low millions ($3 million). It won’t reach the $300 million mark domestically before shedding all its screens. But it’ll come close.

“Your Monster” opened to a whopping $515K. “Memoir of a Snail,” a title which I asked and asked and asked for a review screener of going back weeks, did $69K.