Venom: Let There Be Carnage slithered into theaters last October and delivered on its promise of symbiote-on-symbiote action. Over a brisk 90 minutes, we saw the relationship troubles between Eddie Brock and Venom, together with the origin of the homicidal Carnage. It wasn’t groundbreaking cinema, but it did the job.
Now, for some reason, Sony Pictures has announced that it’s returning to select theaters for a second run. This comes on the same day as its Blu-ray and digital release, check out the mini-teaser:
Let There Be Carnage making an unexpected comeback to multiplexes is a head-scratcher. The most likely possibility is that with Morbius being pushed back once again to the summer, Sony Pictures has a gap in their release schedule and nothing to fill it with, so may as well try and make a little more money from this decent sequel.
The company may also be banking on riding the coattails of Spider-Man: No Way Home, as this film also briefly features Tom Holland’s Spider-Man (albeit on a TV screen). Audiences seem less concerned about COVID right now, so anyone that decided not to see it in theaters in October may decide now’s the time to check it out.
The funniest but most unlikely reason is that Sony has Academy Award ambitions. After all, successful movies are often re-released in January in order to build hype for an Oscar campaign, so maybe they see Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson as contenders for some acting gongs?
Whatever the case, if you want to see Venom: Let There Be Carnage in theaters you can from January 14.