CinemaCon, the annual trade show for theater owners, is a good time for studios to flex their wares and Sony Pictures did that last night at the annual exhibition in Vegas. First up, there were some minor modifications to the two “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” sequels.
As you probably remember, just last week, the first part of the two-part film, “Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse,” moved from October 2022 to summer 2023. That’s a long delay, but hopefully, it’ll be worth it. Meanwhile, 15 minutes of footage of the film was screened last night at CinemCon, plus a title was revealed for part two. Formerly known as “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part Two),” the sequel to ‘Across The Spider-Verse’ is now known as “Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse.”
Produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, ‘Beyond the Spider-Verse’ is due March 2024, if all goes according to plan. ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ apparently features 240 characters and spans six universes, so yeah, maybe now it’s easy to understand why this is a two-part film.
Secondly, while no details were forthcoming, during Sony’s presentation, which teased things like “The Equalizer 3” with Denzel Washington and a new George Foreman biopic, Sony promised a “Venom 3” movie. Given their box office successes—2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” ($502 million globally) and 2018’s “Venom” ($856 million globally)—a third film was a given. Tom Hardy will reprise his role as Venom and Eddie Brock, but it’s unclear where that film will go, who will direct it, and if Venom will finally cross over with Spider-Man as Sony has been threatening to do for a while.
Lastly, during Sony’s CinemaCon presentation, Sony also teased more “Ghostbusters” films but were short on any details. What comes next would presumably be the sequel to the successful, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” film directed by Jason Reitman that grossed $197.3 million last year, but Sony has wanted to greatly expand that universe, so while that’s possible, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone is developing a separate “Ghostbusters” story within the same universe. Sadly, “Ghostbusters” architect and original director Ivan Reitman won’t be there to see it, he passed away last year at the age of 75. It’s unclear whether the younger Reitman will keep carrying the torch, as he avoided his father’s franchise for years, but obviously did very well with it when he finally took the wheel of the Ecto-1.