Venom was arguably the surprise box office hit of 2018, reeling in an absurd $855 million worldwide despite poor reviews. That made the possibility of a sequel a certainty, and we now have official confirmation. Variety reports that a follow-up to the Tom Hardy-Alien Symbiote buddy comedy is in the works.
This news was all but confirmed back in November, 2018, when Sony set aside two release dates – July 10, 2020 and October 2, 2020 – for two then-unconfirmed superhero movies. Everyone that heard the news assumed that one of those dates was a Venom sequel, and that is indeed the case.
Considering Venom‘s massive success in October, 2018, which included the best October opening of all time, the October 2020 release is very likely to be the date for the sequel. The July release is widely rumoured to be the Morbius adaptation set to star Jared Leto.
Co-writer on the original film Kelly Marcel will be returning to pen the script for the sequel, while Hardy and Michelle Williams are both confirmed to be coming back. One name that won’t be returning is director Ruben Fleischer, as he is busy filming Zombieland 2. Sony will reportedly kick off the search for a new director soon.
The sequel will likely pick up where the first film left off, and a mid-credits scene revealed Woody Harrelson as Kletus Kassidy, who is also known as Carnage, historically one of Venom’s great nemesis’s.
Sony would, in a perfect world, like both box office success and critical acclaim, but Venom‘s success goes to show that the latter isn’t always necessary to influence the former. But now that audiences are familiar with Venom’s strangeness and the first film’s banality, it will be interesting to see how the sequel tries to reel them back in. Will an equally schlocky sequel have the same success?
#Peace.Love.Venom
