Theater chains across the States are beginning to reveal Venom‘s official rating and runtime – it’s PG-13 and spans for one hour and 52 minutes.
Yes, it seems Ruben Fleischer’s Spider-Man-less Spider-Man spinoff has settled for the much more palatable PG-13 rating, as opposed to a hard R as some had hoped. That’s not to say the end product won’t be violent – Venom‘s teaser trailer literally alludes to a shot of the Sinister Symbiote chomping on a human head – but considering this is the maiden voyage, so to speak, it’s unsurprising that Sony has favored a PG-13 in order to gauge interest.
Further down the road, other Sony-backed Spidey movies like Kraven and the Jared Leto-fronted Morbius may be awarded R ratings, but for the time being, Venom is playing things ‘safe’ with a family-friendly certificate which, in the year of Avengers: Infinity War and Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, may bode well for such a crucial release.
We say crucial because Venom has been elected as Sony’s franchise-starter, and let’s just say the Powers That Be will hoping that their October tentpole is more akin to Iron Man than, say, The Mummy, which effectively sank the Dark Universe before it even began.
Early box office projections appear to be in Venom‘s favor, after it was revealed that the anti-hero spinoff is headed for a $60M-$70M opening weekend in North America, with A Star is Born coming in at second place with around $30 million. Those figures are based on early tracking and are therefore subject to change, so we’ll be bringing you all the latest as we inch closer and closer to October 5th.