“There’s so much press about ‘Top Gun’ right now. It’s like, ‘The movie
business is back!'” Panitch said. “In a weird way, I would say ‘Top Gun’ is benefitting from us taking our shot. ‘Venom’ is the start of that story that allows ‘Top Gun’ to do the kind of business it did. These things don’t happen overnight. It’s a seeding.”
“When we first started releasing movies last October, there were really no other big movies,” Greenstein said. “Everyone had pushed their big movies to this year, to this summer. We took a big gamble putting ‘Venom’ in theaters. Then we doubled down with ‘Ghostbusters.’ Then our biggest bet was when every other tentpole had fled, we tripled down with ‘Spider-Man’ — our biggest, most important piece of IP.”