Still from Sony’s “Venom”.
Sony
Sony Pictures’ release of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” will be delayed by nearly a month, the studio said Thursday, as Covid-19 cases increase across the country due to the new Delta variant.
The film starts now on October 15th. instead of September 24th The sequel to “Venom” had already been pushed several times during the pandemic.
While it’s only a brief delay, the decision could signal the start of more theater postponements as coronavirus cases have spiked in the United States
The cinema business has struggled to recover from the pandemic standstill, in part due to a shortage of products and because much of the content arriving in theaters has also been made available via streaming services.
Originally, the studios had postponed big blockbusters last year because they wanted to raise as much money as possible from ticket sales in order to get back the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on production. Moviegoers are returning to theaters, but not in the flocks they were before the pandemic.
Films like Disney’s “Black Widow” and Universal’s “F9” have grossed in at the box office, but only a fraction of what they would probably have done in a time without Covid-19. Notably, the first “Venom” film grossed $ 855 million at the box office worldwide.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal distributed “F9”.
