Sony Boss Says Top Gun: Maverick Owes Its Success To Venom 2
Paramount's Top Gun: Maverick has been the undisputed champion at the box office so far this year, accumulating over $1 billion worldwide throughout eight theatrical weekends. The Tom Cruise-led film stands as the highest-grossing film of the year, but Sony Pictures believes its Venom: Let There Be Carnage is attached to the success experienced by the Paramount sequel.
Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group co-presidents Sanford Panitch and Josh Greenstein believe the studio deserves credit for being one of the first to usher audiences back into theaters during the pandemic. Top Gun: Maverick was due to arrive in the summer of 2019 but experienced pushbacks due to the pandemic and its effect on movie theaters. Despite the delays and straight to streaming release from other major studios, Sony remained relatively firm in its theatrical release schedule.
Why Sony's Spider-Man Spinoffs Don't Work
«When we first started releasing movies last October, there were really no other big movies,» expressed Greenstein while speaking with Vulture. The studio released Venom: Let There Be Carnage in theaters in October of last year and saw the film earn an impressive $90 million by the end of its debut weekend. The following month Sony released its long-awaited film Ghostbusters: Afterlife and ended the year with the release of the record-breaking film Spider-Man: No Way Home.
«Everyone had pushed their big movies to this year, to this summer. We took a big gamble putting 'Venom' in theaters. Then we doubled down with 'Ghostbusters,'» stated Greenstein. «Then our biggest bet was when every other tentpole had fled, we tripled down with 'Spider-Man' — our biggest, most important piece of IP.» Spider-Man: No Way Home has earned over $1.9 billion
Read more on gamerant.com
