Beyond The Spider-Verse no longer on the release schedule, as Sony responds to strike pressure
Kraven The Hunter has also been knocked back 10 months as Sony shuffles its schedule in response to the double strike
The forces of SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America have accomplished a feat that few super-powered individuals ever have: Overcoming the combined might of Kraven The Hunter and like a thousand Spiders-People. This is per THR reporter Aaron Couch, who noted on social media today that both the Kraven movie and Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse have just had their release dates seriously re-shuffled, as Sony becomes the first major studio to begin adjusting its schedule to account for the double strike.
In the case of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven, the hit was significant, but not necessarily life-threatening: The movie has been bumped back fully ten months, having been smacked out of October of this year and all the way back into August 2024. (Per THR, while the movie is done filming, Sony really doesn’t want to try to launch this thing without having Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, and Russell Crowe doing the thing on the red carpet.)
But Spider-Verse is just gone entirely, at least at the moment, with Sony not even bothering to set a new date for it after removing it from its spring 2024 release. The franchise’s previous installment, this summer’s Across The Spider-Verse, was already a massively laborious film to get made, with Sony crowing about (and artists occasionally decrying) how many animators were put to work on it. Without the ability to record voice lines or tinker with the script, the film is now simply a question mark on Sony’s schedule. It’s coming, obviously—these movies are super-lucrative—but the when is now unknown.
From a big-picture perspective, this also marks the first time any of the major studios have had to seriously reckon with the effect the strikes will have on their production output. They’ve been getting by with pre-taped promo materials and weird stunts like Disney’s “Let’s walk Mickey Mouse down the red carpet for Haunted Mansion” stunts so far, but Sony is clearly accepting that, until they come back to the table to address writers’ and actors’ demands, their output is going to be seriously impacted.
In addition to the Spider-related films, Sony made a few other tweaks to its schedule this week: Gran Turismo has been bumped back a week, and will now open wide on August 25. And, despite strike worries, Venom 3 and Bad Boys 4 have both gotten release dates, for July 12, 2024, and June 13, 2024, respectively.