Yet another 2020 movie has been pushed back to 2021 thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak. For a while there, it looked like Sony’s Venom 2 was going to stand strong and sit tight on its original October 2nd release date. However, this afternoon, the studio officially changed their schedule, moving the Tom Hardy-starring sequel over into summer 2021. To soften the blow, however, they also unveiled the film’s fan-pleasing, though also kind of silly, subtitle.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage will now slither into cinemas on June 25th, 2021. Superhero movie fans may recognize this date as having previously been filled by Warner Bros.’ The Batman. The Robert Pattinson vehicle just vacated it yesterday, moving to October that year, so Sony have jumped on it with super-human speed. This is the second of the studio’s Marvel movies to be shuffled back as well, following Morbius switching its July 2020 release for March 2021.
What’s more, Venom 2′s revised date all but confirms that Sony’s Spider-Man 3 will likewise have to find a new home. Tom Holland’s MCU threequel was set to swing into theaters in July next year, but that’s surely not going to happen now, given that the lockdown has delayed production. And Sony knows it, otherwise they wouldn’t have rescheduled Let There Be Carnage for just a month before it. A Spider-Man 3 announcement can’t be far away, then, and it’ll mark all the MCU Phase 4 movies being knocked back, from Black Widow to 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder.
As for Venom 2, this shiny new title reminds us that Woody Harrelson will be back as Cletus Kasady, who is destined to become Eddie Brock’s maniacal nemesis. The title references his threat in his debut scene in the last movie, which came in the form of a mid-credits tease. When Brock visited him in jail, he promised that, when he gets out, “there is gonna be carnage.” So, get ready for some carnage next June.