Let there be carnage, indeed. Sony has decided to delay the U.S. release of its upcoming Marvel sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, by three weeks, from September 24 to October 15. It’s not a long delay but the fact there’s a delay at all is giving us, and probably you, flashbacks to early last year when movies began to shift release dates due to the rising covid-19 pandemic.
Directed by Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There Be Carnage follows Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) who is still infected with an alien symbiote that makes him into the powerful Venom. However, this time, Venom will be up against a threat just as powerful as he is: Carnage, aka Cletus Kasady, played by Woody Harrelson.
While almost every studio in Hollywood found a way to put out a few movies during the past year, either with a hybrid release between theatres and on demand, or by just sticking with one or the other, Sony has pressed pause on most of its biggest titles. A few of them, like The Mitchells vs. The Machines, were sold to streamers. Others, like Escape Room 2, just recently opened after delays.
But the rest of the studio’s big 2020 blockbusters, like Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Morbius, are still awaiting release. Part of that is because Sony doesn’t have its own streaming service the way Paramount has Paramount+, Disney has Disney+, Universal has Peacock, and Warner Bros. has HBO Max.
Nevertheless, Sony has patiently waited for the marketplace to be there for its theatrical movies — and this move, as well as a rumour that another upcoming Sony film, the latest Hotel Transylvania, could go to streaming, suggests the company doesn’t feel that it’s there yet, almost certainly for pandemic reasons.
What does this mean for other much-anticipated movies on Sony’s schedule, like Spider-Man: No Way Home for example? Or the overall movie schedule as a whole? Well, if things are starting to go this way again, there’s no question more films will be start being delayed until things out in the world get safer.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is set to release in Australia on October 14.