Venom 3 Gets a Title and a New Release Date
It sounds like Tom Hardy is hanging up his symbiote. Variety reports that Sony has revealed the title of the upcoming third Venom movie; this one will be called Venom: The Last Dance. The film’s release date has also been moved up two weeks to October 25, 2024, from November 8, 2024. Not much about the plot of Venom: The Last Dance is known, but the title suggests this will be the final installment in the series. Juno Temple, Clark Backo, and Chiwetel Ejiofor will be joining Tom Hardy this time, with Kelly Marcel, the writer of all three films, taking over as director from Ruben Fleischer. The last two Venom movies were big moneymakers for Sony; the first made $856 million on a $115 million budget, while Venom: Let There Be Carnage grossed $506.9 million on a similar budget. Funnily, Hardy used the phrase “The Last Dance” in an Instagram post a few months ago.
I didn’t see either of the other Venom movies, so this one isn’t really on my radar. But Sony has been smart about this series, at least from a financial standpoint. (As far as storytelling goes, I don’t see how you have Venom without Spider-Man, and the trailers looked goofy.) They keep the budgets relatively low, especially for a superhero movie, and that makes a modest box office take for the genre profitable. Venom’s budget probably couldn’t cover a month of a Marvel production, but they make their studio much more money than the more recent MCU movies are pulling in for Disney. It makes you wonder why they’re winding the series down; a few more could make up for Sony’s Madame Web and Morbius losses (and Kraven the Hunter, probably). People have said that Tom Hardy wants to stop, which may be the main reason this is the last one. Another could be that they and Marvel want to capitalize on the mid-credits scene of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which suggested the character may be making his MCU debut. It would be cool to see Spider-Man and Venom finally face off in live-action, provided the movie is good.
