The Longer Venom Fans Wait, The More They Salivate

Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage was initially slated to premiere in June 2020, but it’s been delayed three times in the 16 months since. The wait has only made anticipation for the sequel higher.

Venom is not your typical Marvel movie: it follows a supervillain as opposed to a superhero, represents a competing cinematic universe to the cultural behemoth that is the MCU, and features some… interesting decisions from its lead actor when it comes to what an American accent should sound like. Still, the movie has become a cult phenomenon in its own right, and Sony rushed to sign star Tom Hardy up for two sequels, the first of them being Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage. With Woody Harrelson set to play the villain, Sony has reason to believe it would be one of the biggest box office hits of 2020 — until the pandemic hit.

While plenty of films had their release dates pushed back by the 2020 pandemic, Let There Be Carnage has been delayed longer and more times than most of the others. But Ranker data suggests this hasn’t negatively impacted anticipation of the movie. In fact, since April 2021, fans have only voted Venom 2 higher on our list of The Most Anticipated Movies Of 2021.

NOTE: This graph maps the position of Venom 2 on our Most Anticipated Movies of 2021 list. Keep in mind that the graph is a little counterintuitive, as a trend downward in this line actually indicates that Venom has gone up on the list (because the most anticipated movie is at #1). For example, though the line graph goes down from April to May, that means that Venom actually went up on our list during that period. A line trending upward means Venom 2 is becoming a less anticipated film, while a line trending downward means it’s becoming more anticipated. Get it? Got it? Good.

Since moving from #51 to #17 in April, the movie has slowly but surely climbed all the way up to #11. Clearly, the multiple delays that occurred during that time haven’t affected fans’ excitement over it.

Their feelings about the original 2018 Venom movie are a little more complicated — at times, delays were related to more negative feelings about the original. However, positive developments like new trailers and the recent announcement that the film has been pushed up to October 1 have coincided with upticks in sentiments and votes overall.

The graph above tracks both the quantity and ratio of upvotes and downvotes for the original 2018 Venom film across every list on Ranker from October 2019 to September 2021. The red and blue bars represent just how many upvotes and downvotes were cast for Venom during a given month, while the yellow trend line indicates the percentage of those votes that are positive. If May sees 50 upvotes and 50 downvotes for Venom, and June sees 500 upvotes and 500 downvotes, the red and blue bars in June will be 10 times the size of the ones in May, but the yellow trend line will hold steady at 50%.

The graph above demonstrates that, while delays didn’t always directly correlate with increases in sentiment, they’ve managed to maintain voter interest in a 2018 movie for nearly a year and half. Let’s take a closer look at how changing release dates affected movie fans’ perception of Sony’s Venom franchise as the years have gone on.

April 2020: Carnage Is Delayed By The Pandemic

Like so many films in 2020, Venom 2 was pushed back a year to 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic. Far from hurting voter sentiment on Ranker, this delay coincided with a massive spike in votes on the original film, the overwhelming majority of them positive. Most of these votes amount to a sort of backhanded compliment: 689 people upvoted the movie on our list of 15 Bad Superhero Movies That Are Actually Good that month. But whether they hate to love the movie or love to hate it shouldn’t matter much to Sony, because this kind of voting behavior indicates serious interest in the upcoming blockbuster film, with 80% of the votes cast for the original Venom registering as positive.

March 2021: Carnage Slips From Summer Release To Fall

The first delay was expected, as virtually everything slated for 2020 got pushed at least a year into the future. The second delay resulted in more disappointment, which might have had something to do with the sharp decline in sentiment for Venom during March and April of 2021. But that decline reversed just as quickly when a trailer for Carnage was released in May. The fact that sentiment goes up when Sony has good news about the film (a new trailer) and goes down when it has bad news (an unexpected delay) indicates that fans are highly engaged and anticipating the sequel.

August 2021: Carnage Pushed From September To October

The bump brought by the new trailer took a small hit when Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage was postponed until October 15. Sentiment around the original Venom remained reasonably high, though, hovering above 60% positive votes. Most of this reasonable downturn in sentiment can be attributed to voter activity on our list of The Best Superhero Movies Ever Made, where the original Venom was downvoted by 15 people.

September 2021: Carnage Release Date Moved Up for First Time

A few days after it was announced that the film would premiere October 1 instead of October 15, voter sentiment jumped nearly 10%. In particular, Venom (2018) got overwhelmingly positive votes on our lists of Times An Actor Played The Hero And The Villain In The Same Movie and The Best Action Movies Of The 2010s, Ranked. Now that the movie’s out, we can only expect that percentage to rise.

Again, while this data doesn’t suggest delays have had a straightforward positive effect on the feelings' of movie fans, it does indicate that Sony has managed to keep its audience tuned in and engaged throughout an unusually long waiting period. That’s no small feat in a very crowded entertainment market — it’ll be exciting to see how sentiment for the sequel fares now that the movie has premiered.

These stories are crafted using Ranker Insights, which takes over one billion votes cast on Ranker.com and converts them into actionable psychographics about pop culture fans across the world. To learn more about how our Ranker Insights can be customized to serve your business needs, visit insights.ranker.com, or email us at insights@ranker.com.

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