MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Venom: Let There Be Carnage is almost here, and the only place to see it is exclusively in movie theaters. Get ready as Columbia Pictures prepares to unleash the new action thriller in Philippine cinemas starting December 8th. Tom Hardy returns as the lethal protector Venom, one of MARVEL’s greatest and most complex characters. Directed by Andy Serkis, the film also stars Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, and Woody Harrelson, in the role of the villain Cletus Kasady/Carnage.
When we last met Eddie Brock and Venom, both played by Tom Hardy, the two had formed an uneasy alliance. With the 2018 feature film Venom, audiences thrilled to the MARVEL Comics fan-favorite making his long-awaited starring role on screen.
The film took in over $856 million worldwide as Eddie, the dogged but self-centered reporter, and Venom, the alien symbiote who takes hold of Eddie’s body, both relied on each other to survive: Eddie could do much better in life with Venom’s eat-or-be-eaten (literally) m.o., and Venom had to be reined in by Eddie’s finely-tuned sense of moral justice. They agreed that they needed each other… but they didn’t have to like it.
“It’s a joy to play two different parts of a psyche because Venom and Eddie are one for me,” says Hardy. “They are just differentiated by the fact that one is the monster and one is Eddie, but they are always contained within one individual.”
Indeed, in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, that shaky marriage is starting to crumble. Sure, there are still upsides… Eddie has told Venom that he could bite the heads off of bad guys, and the symbiote is 100% here for it, dubbing themself the Lethal Protector and munching evildoers in pursuit of justice… and Eddie’s career is firmly on the upswing, getting the career-defining last interview with serial killer Cletus Kasady.
But despite it all, they still make each other nuts – and their constant bickering escalates until it finally devolves into a violent manic battle as they try to figure out who is throwing who out of the apartment and the body they share. Both Venom and Eddie are determined to figure out if they really do need each other after all.
“The film is a love story – but not the love story you might think,” says Andy Serkis, who directs Venom: Let There Be Carnage. “It’s very much about the extraordinary relationship between symbiote and host. Any love affair has its pitfalls, its high points, and low points; Venom and Eddie’s relationship absolutely causes problems and stress, and they have a near-hatred for each other. But they have to be with each other – they can’t live without each other. That’s companionship – love – the things that relationships are really about.”
For Serkis – who as an actor worked with performance capture artists to create some of the most memorable characters of the last 20 years, including Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes films, and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars – watching the first Venom film as a moviegoer filled him with some professional pride and admiration. “I thought Tom gave an extraordinary performance. It was right in my wheelhouse – creating characters using CG,” he says. “When Tom gave me a call out of the blue, saying he thought it would be great if I directed the sequel and asking me to come on board, I think it was because he wanted a director who would be capable of safeguarding his performance, translating it into a visual-effects realm, with some degree of authority from experience with that. We had been circling each other as actors for so many years, and it was wonderful to finally get the chance to work with Tom.”
“Andy has spent years in front of the camera as well as behind it. He’s done performance capture and animation, and he understands story and nuance and vocal landscapes,” concludes Hardy. “He’s a great actor, a great director, and a decent man too. He was perfect to direct this and has done an amazing job.”
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, the local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Use the hashtag #Venom
