Back in July, we reported that Andy Serkis was one of the frontrunners to direct Sony’s Venom sequel, presumably because he has some experience with pulling believable characters out of hideous CG monsters (not that Venom is hideous, of course, because we know how badly some of you want to get down with him), and now The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed it: Andy Serkis is officially directing Venom 2. This will only be Serkis’ third directing gig, following 2017's Breathe and 2018's Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle (the Jungle Book movie that didn’t have the “Bare Necessities,” if you will), but again, he has loads of experience with CG creatures after playing Gollum, Supreme Leader Snoke, and Caesar the ape, so there is certainly some logic here.
As for Venom 2, it’s been a poorly kept secret since last November, when Sony quietly put an untitled Marvel movie on its release schedule for 2020 just a few months after Jared Leto’s Morbius, and it was essentially confirmed in January when the studio hired screenwriter Kelly Marcel to put together a script. Also, Woody Harrelson will presumably be making good on his post-credits stinger cameo by appearing as Cletus Kasady—a.k.a. Carnage, who is like Venom but red and not sexy. Or maybe he is sexy? We don’t know, but we trust Andy Serkis to at least make sure that he doesn’t look silly.
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Venom 2: Antivenom
PLEASE. I’d love to see whatever version of that costume they manage to translate to screen.
Full disclosure: I wrote that post thinking I was making a pun. Little did I know that pop culture had already deigned to create the character of Antivenom, thus making me feel very, very old.
I’m an old as well but I do have the original series of Lethal Protector and the various origins for the original spate of offspring and that was well before the antivenom character and the dozen or so newer ones. Bloody hell there’s a lot of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiote_(comics)
Tom Hardy and Jared Leto should both be given rusty machetes, a bottle of absinthe, and locked in a steel cage. Call the movie Marvel Bullpen and let them hack each other to pieces.Phase 69, complete.
I dunno Rogue. Your gif seems…interested?
Excelsior!
Cool. Then, aside from Harrelson, if they just recast everyone from the first film and get a decent script then this film might be ok.Not too much to ask, eh?
The cast of Upgrade (best Venom film of 2018) would actually on the whole be an upgrade.
Unfortunately, the same person who wrote the first one is writing this one, so…
And redesign Venom…
Venom is a shitty movie but Tom Hardy batshit insane but utterly captivating performance is its saving grace. Recasting that would be madness. I agree a decent script would help.
I’ve enjoyed Hardy in many things, but he was miscast in Venom.
Everyone, Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed and Jenny Slate were all such odd choices, it was distracting.
However, I agree recasting would be madness. But so is making a sequel.
The only person I thought was miscast was Riz. Or at the very least the material he had to work with was complete shit. I enjoyed the movie for what it was but always fast forward through his scenes.
Yeah, he’s an amazing actor but was just given the most generic “evil corporate guy” role to play. I kept waiting for the twist or idea that made sense of why he signed on, but it never came.
What sort of person would you have cast? Because I’m sure Hardy did something in that vein in one of the twelve separate performances he turned in in that film.
Yup. The movie isn’t that good, but it is watchable solely based on Tom Hardy’s go-for-broke performance.
Agree 100%. Word has it that Hardy initial take on the amcharacter was much more damaged and alcoholic or ptsd or something. The studio removed all the dark shit so he just seems to start the film like a twitchy, educationally sub normal, Charlie Day mess, but the movie insists on telling us he’s a super smart and successful reporter. That performance is so captivating.
Yeah it’s not like I’m going to watch it again but Hardy’s crazy ass performance is the only thing that makes me feel I didn’t waste my time watching it.
the casting was great, the cast wasn’t.
It’s really crazy that Disney owns so many things now, but still can’t manage to get back the rights to all the Marvel characters.
Give it time. Full spectrum dominance by Disney/Marvel is all but here as it is.
The Sony contract is tighter than a dolphin’s purse strings.All Sony need to do, to keep the rights,(which they paid $10m for), in perpetuity is to make a film every few years – that’s it, a film every few years and they never lose the rights.
yeah there was apparently some kind of contract agreement where if far from home made less than a billion a certain percentage of the rights would revert back to marvel. obviously it made a billion, but i wonder what that would have looked like.i also wonder what kind of contract tom holland has. does sony cut the cheque for the sony movies and disney for theirs? i know he had a 5 picture deal (which is up?) but it explains both why marvel seems to be setting him up to be iron man (so they can get him on a disney-only contract) and why sony threw the uncharted franchise at him even though it makes no sense.
It was 5 movies then a renegotiation, since Sony get 100% of the profit from the Spider-Man movies, and get free creative input from Marvel they’d be stupid to end the movies now.Marvel get the merch and the character to play with.Marvel can’t take the character of Peter Parker and transplant it into the MCU and Sony don’t want to give up what is effectively free money, so he’ll be around for a while.If Holland was lucky he got a pay or play contract on that Uncharted movie, because it ain’t happening.But like you say – Disney are big time wanting him to be the front for the next phase of the MCU – he could be Spider-Man for another twenty years and only just be the age RDJ was in Ironman.
SOON
The Cleetus tag at the end made me dislike the movie after finding it generally enjoyable for the first 130ish minutes.It was just such a stupid, stupid scene.
Gollum has really stretched out a motion capture gig beyond what anyone thought was possible.
I forgot that Jared Leto is playing Morbius. God I’m sick of Jared Leto. Please go away, Jared Leto!
I just hope they redesign Venom.
Andy Serkis is fine.
He’s good at what he does…which is mostly pretending to be animals.But his directing credentials are not something to crow about.
Missing from the credits list in the article is his second unit gig on the Hobbit movies. Yikes.
I’m in.