Update: Sony announced Monday, Feb. 26, plans to shift “Bad Boys 4” up one week to June 7.
Original story: As part of a release slate announcement, Sony Pictures announced on Friday that it has set summer 2024 release dates for the fourth installment of the “Bad Boys” series and the third installment of Marvel’s “Venom” series starring Tom Hardy.
“Bad Boys 4” will see Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return to theaters on Father’s Day weekend on June 14, 2024. The previous installment in the series, “Bad Boys for Life,” made $426.5 million at the global box office in early 2020 just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut theaters down. The directing team of Adil & Bilal, who spearheaded “Bad Boys 3,” are back in the director’s chair.
“Venom 3” will be released on July 12, 2024, and comes as Sony pushes forward on developing films based on Marvel villains and antiheroes that it has the film rights to. It also pushes the “Venom” franchise into the heat of the summer movie season, as the first two “Venom” films opened in October.
The first “Venom” became one of the highest-grossing films of 2018 with $856 million worldwide. Given that much of that total came from China, it is very unlikely that “Venom 3” will match that total given that country’s diminished interest in Hollywood films.
Instead, “Venom 3” will look to clear the $506.8 million global total of its 2021 predecessor “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” which opened in the fall as the box office recovered from the pandemic shutdown. Kelly Marcel, who wrote the first two “Venom” films, makes her directorial debut with “Venom 3.”
“Bad Boys 4” is currently set for release on the same weekend as Disney/Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” though it remains to be seen whether that film will have to move due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. As part of the slate change, Sony announced that “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse” would leave its March 2024 release date with no new date set, as voice lines for the film had not been recorded.
“Venom 3,” meanwhile, will move into a crowded July slate that includes a fourth “Despicable Me” film from Universal and Illumination, Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” and Marvel Studios’ “Captain America: Brave New World.”
