The new Venom film is now in theaters, but critics aren’t exactly singing their praises for Eddie Brock’s first standalone outing, with the pic currently holding an underwhelming score of 31% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you’re wondering if such bad buzz might kill the character’s chances for the sequel Sony so clearly wants, though, it seems that the comic book flick is so far faring a lot better with the general public.
At the time of writing, the Ruben Fleischer-helmed film boasts an impressive Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 89%. While this will no doubt change over time as more and more people see the movie, it still seems that a lot of fans are happy with what they’ve seen from the alien symbiote so far.
This, combined with the film’s gigantic opening weekend haul at the box office, which smashed all sorts of records, means that a Venom 2 is basically a guarantee at this point. And while Sony hasn’t announced anything official just yet, let’s take a look at what we might get in the hypothetical sequel.
For one, it’s clear that the main antagonist in the next film will be Carnage. At the end of Venom, we see Eddie Brock encounter a man named Cletus Kasady in prison, and though he doesn’t have the symbiote in him at that point, the crazed serial killer does name-drop the terrifying villain and as fans will know, Kasady goes on to become Carnage in the comics. Plus, there’s also the fact that Woody Harrelson, who plays Kasady, has already confirmed his involvement in the sequel – should there be one.
Of course, Tom Hardy will be back as well, given he has a three picture-contract with Sony. And though there’ve been reports of the actor struggling to work with some of the cast and crew on set at times, it’s unlikely he’ll back out of his deal should a sequel move forward, especially since Venom performed so well financially. We imagine that Michelle Williams will return as Anne Weying, too, but to date, we haven’t heard from the actress on the matter.
With a sequel not even confirmed at this point, it’s hard to say when Venom 2 could slither into theaters, but 2020 would seem like the best guess. After all, Sony won’t want to wait too long to capitalize on all the buzz surrounding the film and will likely announce the follow-up quite soon. Perhaps they’ll even make the reveal early in the new year and then premiere the first trailer that summer at Comic-Con?
Chalk that up as speculation for now, but what we can tell you for the time being is that it’s very unlikely we’ve seen the last of Eddie Brock.