Andy Serkis, Bumblebee director in line to helm Sony's weird-ass Venom sequel

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Andy Serkis, Bumblebee director in line to helm Sony's weird-ass Venom sequel
There’s our handsome boy! Photo: Columbia Pictures

You’d be forgiven—given the fact that roughly nine million superhero movies, some of them upwards of eight hours in length apiece—have come out since, but Sony’s Spider-Man-without-Spider-Man movie Venom was actually something of a big deal at the box office last year. Directed by Ruben Fleischer, and starring Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy Doing A Very Spooky Voice, the film made $855 million during its time in theaters—not billionaire playboy Peter Parker money, but still pretty dang good.

So it was pretty obvious that Sony was going to be making a sequel to all of the original film’s brain-chomping weirdness—a whole cinematic universe, in point of fact, with Jared Leto’s vampire-themed Morbius out next summer—but the studio has run into a minor problem: Fleischer is pretty busy right now, working on Zombieland: Double Tap. And so Variety reports that the great Venom 2 Director Hunt is on, with folks like Andy Serkis and Bumblebee director Travis Knight (both of whom having pretty much proven their CGI motion-capture bona fides at this point) in the running. (Captive State’s Rupert Wyatt, too.)

Current speculation is that the film is being aimed at an October 2020 release date—Sony’s got an untitled superhero movie set for then, and who better to fill it than the sexual goop man and his handsome reporter friend?—so they’ll need to get a move on pretty soon. There’s no word yet on what sort of story the sequel might cover, but Fleischer’s old buddy Woody Harrelson popped up at the end of the first movie to play the human host of alien psychopath Carnage, so that seems like a pretty potent hint.

24 Comments

  • unosensemake-av says:

    The first sentence of this post is incomprehensible. I’d be forgiven for what now?

    • finiteishjest-av says:

      You’d be forgiven—given the fact that roughly nine million superhero movies, (some of them upwards of eight hours in length apiece) have come out since—that Sony’s Spider-Man-without-Spider-Man movie Venom was actually something of a big deal at the box office last year.

    • velvetal-av says:

      I think they’re forgiving you for coming out after watching “Venom.” 

    • timstalinaccounting-av says:

      The comma and dash around “have come out since” should be swapped for it to make sense.Also, that’s some stellar comment/username synergy.

    • paulkinsey-av says:

      Fixed it:
      You’d be forgiven for forgetting, given the fact that roughly nine million superhero movies—some of them upwards of eight hours in length apiece—have come out since, but Sony’s Spider-Man-without-Spider-Man movie Venom was actually something of a big deal at the box office last year.

      • unosensemake-av says:

        Out of the several replies attempting to fix it, this is the only one that actually does. If they ever decide to hire editors, you will get my recommendation. 

  • dropossum-av says:

    The uninspired direction and bland look at the first Venom were big drawbacks but the movie had something in the fun interplay between Eddie Brock and the symbiote.  A new director could make the sequel a lot better.  

    • ihatewater-av says:

      You’re quite right here. I thought Venom was more fun than it had any right to be and I was hoping it would have a sequel. But no, the direction itself wasn’t anything great. I enjoyed watching Tom Hardy pretend to be a loser, get called a loser by an alien symbiote.

  • untstdmthds-av says:

    They need to push for an R rating, honestly. Let it be weird and fucked up. Venom needs his “edge” as its based heavily in the 90s edgelord direction it went. So lean into it.  At least go for a Dark Knight PG-13, where we’re all wondering how it got a PG-13

  • filmgamer-av says:

    Mowgli was awful, breathe wasn’t very good, but Andy was CGI Gollum so who cares? He’s not a great director. He’s a phenomenal actor. I guess Travis Knight is the best choice. Rupert Wyatt made the only good Apes film imo but he also ironically had Serkis. 

    • actionactioncut-av says:

      I would argue that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the best one, and its best performance belongs to Toby Kebbell, though that put a damper on the endless jerking off that year about how Serkis deserved an Oscar nomination.

  • hulk6785-av says:

    Venom made $855 million?  

    • actionactioncut-av says:

      It rode the wave of Spider-Man: Homecoming, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • freshpp54-av says:

      In the 90s everyone flocked to movies with trailers where the villain said “kill them all”. We’ve now entered the era where everyone will flock to movies if the phrase “turd in the wind” appears in the trailer.

    • adamtrevorjackson-av says:

      they actually extended its box office run in china, which rarely happens.

    • coastermonkey61-av says:

      Man, we really will go see someone hurling shit against the wall if it has anything to do with superheroes wont we?

    • jessicarozic1991-av says:

      Tom Hardy and his porn star lips sell tickets, yo. Also it was pretty fun! And Marvel was in it’s “let’s make everyone sad” stage. We needed a break. 

  • squamateprimate-av says:

    You kidding me with that last paragraph?Sony is definitely not going to release a movie this CG heavy a mere 16 months from now if they don’t even have a director yet.

  • ganews-av says:

    They squandered the originality of a sequel where the villain is a famous evil symbiote by having the villain of the original be a not-famous evil symbiotes.Also Woody Harrellson looked like he was wearing a Ronald McDonald wig.

    • jessicarozic1991-av says:

      I literally only sat through those painful Hunger Games movies for Woody and the shitty wigs they put him in

  • docprof-av says:

    The biggest problem they might have is that Tom Hardy is a pretty horrible actor, especially if he has to do an accent.

    • floofenstein-av says:

      Tom Hardy+Weird Accent is honestly gold tho; Bane, Max, Shinzon were all incredible (in both senses of the word) one way or another. It’s a fundamental law of cinema at this point: Let Hardy have a speech impedi- I mean, weird accent, and let it roll.

  • djclawson-av says:

    If you watched this movie as if it was a romantic comedy, it was a great movie.

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