A Surprising Marvel Movie Is Finding Lots Of Love On Netflix

Of all the movies based on Marvel Comics properties, Venom isn’t one of the better ones. The film launched to much hype and fanfare back in 2018 but was panned by critics on arrival and divided fans, though Tom Hardy earned plaudits for his performance as Eddie Brock. Despite its rotten reception at launch, the Ruben Fleischer pic has been performing surprisingly well on Netflix of late, breaking into the Top 10 of the streaming service’s most-watched movies chart.

The latest figures from independent market tracker FlixPatrol indicate that Venom is currently the 10th most popular film on Netflix worldwide, having arrived on the platform in August. This is fairly impressive given that it didn’t receive much love when it debuted theatrically, especially when you consider it’s up against recent Netflix exclusives such as Project Power.

Although Venom was largely dismissed as a generic comic book movie upon release, it was far from a disaster at the box office, raking in just over $856 million. Okay, so this isn’t exactly an Avengers-rivalling figure, but it was profitable enough to push a sequel into development and keep Sony’s plans for a shared cinematic universe of Spider-Man villains alive.

The aforementioned sequel, now officially titled Venom: Let There Be Carnage, would have been released in theatres next month if the coronavirus crisis hadn’t reared its ugly head. In any case, post-production was underway by the time most studios were forced into shutdown, so the way is paved for the follow-up to meet its new release date of June 25th, 2021.

Let There Be Carnage certainly has potential, not least because it will give Marvel fans the chance to see one of the greatest Spider-Man bad guys of all time, Cletus Kasady and his symbiotic alter ego, on the big screen. Woody Harrelson will, of course, be playing him, following on from his brief cameo in Venom and director Andy Serkis is the man charged with overseeing the pic.

While the original Venom wasn’t a particularly memorable movie, it’s worth a watch for Hardy’s performance if you didn’t catch it when it was released in theatres or on home media. Moreover, next year’s sequel is a far more exciting proposition, so there’s no harm in streaming its predecessor for an early recap of what came before if you have a few hours to kill.