Like the overwhelming majority of Hollywood blockbusters, Venom: Let There Be Carnage was rag-dolled around the release calendar as the theatrical industry was forced to constantly reshuffle the deck as it reacted to the pandemic.
Tom Hardy’s second outing as Eddie Brock was initially scheduled for October 2, 2020 before ultimately arriving 364 days later. Prior to that, it was pushed to June 25, September 17, September 25 and October 15, although the success of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings saw Sony move Let There Be Carnage up by two weeks.
Even though he’d already wrapped principal photography before COVID-19 came along and forced every major production to shut down, director Andy Serkis admitted in a recent interview with the ReelBlend podcast that if the Venom sequel hadn’t been delayed to October, it would have resulted in a much poorer final product.
“We’ve just kept refining, kept refining, and actually, in all honesty, the original release date was nigh on impossible. It would’ve been a much poorer movie visually because there was so much to do. You know, the ambition for it was huge, and the time was not really long enough to really execute it.”
While Venom: Let There Be Carnage is hardly going down a storm with critics, the Rotten Tomatoes score of 59% is comfortably dwarfed by an 86% audience rating. It’s even in with a shot of landing the pandemic’s biggest opening weekend, so Serkis might be right in saying the delays worked out in the movie’s favor.
