Venom was not a good movie, but it was pretty fun to watch. Somehow, through sheer luck and hair-brained ideas, Sony pulled off a weirdly campy anti-hero movie that worked by not working. It will be interesting to see if the sequel can deliver the same tone, but the wait to find out is going to be longer as COVID-19 has forced the release date to move from Oct. 2, 2020, to June 25, 2021. Sony did, however, reveal the film’s full title alongside the delay announcement: Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
It’s the kind of movie title that is just so blatantly on the nose that it’s both terrible and wonderful at the same time, much like the first film. The title makes it very clear that Carnage will play a major role in the sequel as was foreshadowed by a delightfully campy teaser at the end of the first movie that introduced us to Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady, who eventually becomes the symbiote supervillain.
The delay puts the film’s release back after Morbius, which moved from this summer to March of next year earlier. Considering Sony is attempting to build an anti-hero franchise out of Spider-Man villains, this makes sense as any world-building being done in Morbius would need to come out before Venom: Let There Be Carnage hit. There’s no word on the status of the next film in the universe, Madame Web.
Andy Serkis is signed on to direct the film. Kelly Marcel has returned to write the second film.