Tom Hardy has teased the comicbook symbiote showdown we’re all waiting for: Venom vs Carnage.
At the end of 2018’s Venom – which saw Hardy take on the role of journalist Eddie Brock, who becomes the titular anti-hero – we caught our first glimpse of serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson).
As Brock interviews him through a prison cell, we’re warned: ‘There’s going to be carnage.’ Now, Tom Hardy is hyping up their inevitable tussle even further.
On Instagram, Hardy posted an an artsy picture of two symbiote masks: one black, the other red, both with tongues out. Captioned ‘W3’R’V3N0M2’ (obviously, this translates to ‘We Are Venom 2′), it all but confirms one thing: Carnage is coming.
Carnage is a particularly nasty villain. In his written origins, he bonds with offspring Venom’s alien symbiote during a prison breakout. While Hardy’s Brock managed to channel his new powers into something good by the end of the movie, it’s far less likely this’ll happen for Harrelson’s foe.
The symbiote traditionally amplifies all of Kasady’s psychopathic traits, making him an immensely dangerous, despicable monster – and he’s bloody strong too.
Hardy and Harrelson are confirmed to star in the sequel, with Michelle Williams also confirmed to return. Oscar-nominee Naomie Harris (Moonlight, Skyfall) is also reportedly being eyed for the role of Shriek, Carnage’s villainous girlfriend.
Raking in more than $850 million at the box office, a sequel to Venom (which was critically panned, sitting at 29% on Rotten Tomatoes) was inevitable.
Check out the trailer for Venom below:
However, Carnage is only the beginning of the exciting directions the series is heading. In an interview with Fandom, the first film’s director Ruben Fleischer said Tom Hardy’s Venom and Tom Holland’s MCU Spider-Man are destined to come together.
Fleischer said:
That’s where it’s all going to lead. And that’s the exciting thing, because we changed the origin of Venom… in the comics, he evolved from Spider-Man but because of the Marvel-Sony thing we weren’t able to that.
And so the thing I think it’s building towards, and will be exciting to see, is when they actually do confront each other.
However, Ruben Fleischer has stepped out of the director’s chair, letting Gollum himself, Andy Serkis, take the helm on the sequel.
Fleischer added:
If anything, I would have changed the critics’ reaction to it. I was really bummed that people didn’t like it because it’s a crowd-pleasing movie and I’m not sure if there was just blow-back against Sony or people just worship Marvel.
But I was really surprised that the critics [were gunning for it] because audiences really enjoyed the movie. And so many people who’ve seen it just appreciated that it was a fun superhero movie. So I was a little surprised. I don’t know what they were expecting.
If Carnage is done right, audiences ain’t gonna know what hit ’em.
Venom 2 will hit cinemas in October 2020.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.