Venom will be back sooner than expected. Sony Pictures announced late Monday that it was moving up the Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson-led Venom: Let There Be Carnage by two weeks. The second Venom movie and the next Marvel entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe will now release October 1, as opposed to October 15. This comes in response to the box office success of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, also a Marvel movie albeit from the house of Disney, which brought in over $140 million (about Rs. 1,020 crores) over its opening weekend and by the end of Monday.
Sony Pictures also has huge box office hopes for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, given the commercial success of the first film in 2018. Venom grossed over $850 million (about Rs. 6,219 crores) worldwide — even as it failed critically — with $213.5 million (about Rs. 1,562 crores) from cinemas in the US and Canada, and $269 million (about Rs. 1,968 crores) from theatres in China. There’s no clarity on a China release date for Venom: Let There Be Carnage though, so it’ll be interesting to see how the sequel fares — especially given COVID-19.
This is not the first time that Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s release date has been changed. Originally set to drop in October 2020, the next Venom movie was first delayed to June 2021, then to September 2021, before jumping to October 15 due to a resurgence of coronavirus cases in the US due to the highly-contagious Delta variant. Venom: Let There Be Carnage was widely expected to be further delayed, more so in the wake of Paramount Pictures pushing Tom Cruise-led Top Gun: Maverick to 2022, but Sony Pictures has decided to stick, rather than twist.
The new October 1 release date for Venom: Let There Be Carnage places it a week prior to the US opening of Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 James Bond, No Time to Die, out October 8 in North America. But that’s not the case elsewhere, including India and the UK, where No Time to Die releases September 30. That could pit Venom against Bond. Gadgets 360 has reached out to Sony Pictures Entertainment India to confirm if Venom: Let There Be Carnage will release October 1 in India as well. We will update this story if we hear back.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is out October 1 in cinemas worldwide. It will be available in 3D, IMAX, and premium large formats. In India, it will release in English, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. Tickets go on sale this Wednesday, September 8 in the US.
Venom 2 to be released 2 weeks early
The upcoming sequel was initially set to hit the big screen on October 15, but Sony bosses have reportedly decided to bump the release forward to October 1 following the recent success of Marvel’s record-breaking box office debut of ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,’ according to Deadline.
The follow-up to the 2018 blockbuster sees Tom Hardy reprise his role as Venom/ Eddie Brock opposite Woody Harrelson as supervillain Carnage.
The ‘Venom’ sequel is directed by Andy Serkis – who took over from Ruben Fleischer – and he teased in February that the movie would be “thrilling”.
He said: “I really can’t say too much about it but we’re 40 days into shoot and it’s really thrilling.
“We’ve got the magnificent Tom Hardy at the centre of it and we see a deepening of the relationship between he and Venom.
“Obviously there’s a nemesis character … and that’s all I can say. “It’s going well and we got a fantastic cast in it.”
Cinematographer Robert Richardson had previously confirmed that Harrelson would be starring in the film.
Explaining his motivation for working on the blockbuster, Richardson said: “I watched it again, then they sent me a script and I felt like, yeah, I would say yes anyway to Andy just because I would say yes to Andy, but I also think it’s a great … I think it’s unexplored yet, and it’s going to explode, and this film, I think, will help it explode, because you have a remarkable central character with Venom, but now you’ve got Woody Harrelson, who’s going to obviously make his own little entrance here, and we’ll see what else comes in with the Sony Marvel collaboration.”