By [ad_1]
Sony teased a third Venom movie at this year’s CinemaCon on Monday evening. The first two Spider-Man adjacent films, which starred Tom Hardy as the Marvel spider-antihero, collectively have grossed $1.4 billion at the global box office to date. It was the briefest of teases: just the pic’s logo in a closing sizzle reel unveiling its slate of forthcoming titles at the Las Vegas event.
Sony’s animated Marvel venture “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” may have been moved off the 2022 calendar to a June 2, 2023 release date, but expect the follow-up to the Best Animated Feature Academy Award winner to show up during the presentation with first-look footage. (And it did!) This is just part one, however, of a two-part sequel to the animated hit — and just the latest expansion of Sony’s own Marvel offerings adjacent to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Earlier this year, Sony released the Marvel vampire tale “Morbius,” starring Jared Leto, to mixed but not totally failed box office.)
The last Venom movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, was released in October, scored the second-best opening of the pandemic and second-best ever for October with $90M stateside. This was all before Sony’s own Spider-Man: No Way Home notched the second-biggest debut ever in U.S./Canada with $260.1M. Venom: Let There Be Carnage grossed $213.55M, and $502M worldwide.
Additionally, Sony ain’t afraid of no ghosts…
… Specifically making more Ghostbusters movies. Deadline reports that the studio also announced that a sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife is in the works. Like the Venom 3 announcements, no talent attachments were revealed.
The latest movie, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, centers around the grandkids of Dr. Egon Spengler and was directed by Jason Reitman. It minted $129.3M at the domestic box office and $197.3M WW after a Thanksgiving release, taking the franchise’s global worth to $938.2M.
Perhaps the most surprising entry in the sci-fi and superhero genre is was the announced an El Muerto movie in development with Latin Grammy winner and platinum-selling recording artist Bad Bunny attached to star. Bad Bunny made a surprise appearance at Cinemacon during Sony’s panel.
The character of El Muerto aka Juan Carlos was a super-powered wrestler who originally fought Spider-Man in a charity wrestling match in which he nearly unmasked the webslinger before being stung by Spider-Man with a paralyzing poison. After his oppressor El Dorado came to claim his life, he was saved by Spider-Man, after which the two team up to defeat Dorado.
El Muerto would mark the first Latin superhero to get his own film in the universe of Marvel characters, coming right after Sony recently scheduled Madame Web, which marked the first female character from the Spider-Man universe to get her own film.
Though El Muerto isn’t nearly as well known as Venom or Kraven the Hunter, Sony’s rush to get this film into development had a lot to do with Bad Bunny’s persistence in finding that right superhero property for himself. The superstar is set to make his major studio debut in the highly-anticipated action pic Bullet Train on July 29, a project Sony is very high on and has already led to Aaron Taylor-Johnson landing the lead role in Kraven the Hunter. The same situation looks to have happened with Bad Bunny with execs extremely high on the final Bad Bunny footage from the film.
Following recent meetings to figure out a starring vehicle for him, the multi-hyphenate took matters into his own hands and began mining the Spider-Man library for Latin characters that would suit him, eventually coming across El Muerto. The studio loved the idea and the hope is to move fast on the project given Bad Bunny’s busy touring and acting schedule.
[ad_2]
