Earlier this summer, audiences were left a gasp when the Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse ending left Miles Morales on a seriously big cliffhanger. All the while, the release date for its next sequel Beyond the Spider-Verse has been for early 2024, with so many arrows had been pointing to an impending delay. Finally, Sony has updated release date plans for the animated Marvel film, and it’s a bummer.
Amidst the WGA Writers Strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike placing Hollywood at a standstill, Sony just made a ton of updates to its release calendar. Among the changes, per The Hollywood Reporter, Beyond the Spider-Verse has been removed off the calendar completely. It previously had a date among upcoming 2024 movies on March 29.
With the hole left in the calendar by Spider-Verse’s delay, Sony has decided to delay the untitled Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel that was previously dated for this December to March 29. Additionally, on the live-action Spider-Verse front, the Kraven the Hunter movie has just received a major push from this October’s release date to August 30, 2024.
The next live-action Spider-Verse movie will now be Madame Web, which is coming to theaters two days earlier, on Valentine’s Day 2024 rather than February 16.
In better news, the shakeups also included Venom 3 finally earning a release date of July 12, 2024. Sony also announced the release date for Bad Boys 4 for the first time, which is now set to come out on June 14, 2024.
Making 'Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse' With Phil Lord & Chris Miller
Some of Sony’s release date shifts certainly seem to point to the ongoing Hollywood strikes, which have not only paused movie productions, but have prevented actors from promoting their movies. However, tons of clues have been stacking up for months that alluded to Beyond the Spider-Verse not coming in March of 2024. This was coming either way.
For one, Across The Spider-Verse composer, Daniel Pemberton told CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast in June that “no one will talk about the third film,” because everyone on the team is “so exhausted” from making the previous one. Additionally, one animator spoke out in an interview saying there was “no way” it would come out in 2024 given its status in pre-production.
While we currently have no idea when Beyond the Spider-Verse is coming out, surely Spider-Man fans would rather see another amazing animated film from Sony instead of a rushed one that could have potentially been sabotaged by the pressure to make a release date. Both Spider-Verse movies have been deemed animation masterpieces by many, and artwork as complex and eye-popping as that takes years to achieve.
It honestly may take years before we see the Spider-Verse trilogy’s epic conclusion. Between the current strikes and where the production allegedly is right now, patience is of virtue we need to practice Spider-Verse fans! Hey, at least we’ll have three live-action Spider-Verse movies in 2024 to hold us over as we await the new Beyond the Spider-Verse release date, eh?
