Against all odds, 2018’s “Venom” and its sequel, last year’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” managed to make $1.36 billion worldwide at the box office. Not bad for two films that cost about $100 million each and that critics mostly reviled. Now, Deadline reports that prep for “Venom 3” is underway, and a new director will take over the franchise for its third and final installment: Kelly Marcel, who wrote and produced the first two films in the series. It’s Marcel’s first time as a feature director.
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Plot details for the third “Venom” are unknown right now, but Hardy returns as Eddie Brock and his alter-ego, the titular alien symbiote. There’s also no word what characters from Sony‘s “Spider-Man” universe will be part of the new film, either. But Hardy will have a story credit alongside Marcel, who pens the film’s script along with her directing duties.
Ruben Fleischer and Andy Serkis directed the first two installments of the “Venom” series, but Marcel has been with the franchise from the start. Insiders tell Deadline that Marcel and Hardy have always worked closely on Venom’s story and that the two know how’d they like the series, now a trilogy, to end. Earlier this year, Hardy announced on social media that Marcel was hard at work on the “Venom 3” script. Sources say that as the pair developed the upcoming film’s story, it became clear that Marcel should helm the movie, too.
Marcel broke into the movie industry by writing the film in the “Fifty Shades Of Grey” film series. However, she and Hardy go back to 2008, when she was a script editor on the film “Bronson,” which stars Hardy as infamous British prison inmate Charles Bronson. Marcel also pens the upcoming fantasy series “The Changeling.” As for Hardy, he stars next in Gareth Evans‘ “Havoc” and is currently filming Jeff Nichols‘ “The Bikeriders.”
So, will “Venom 3” defy critical expectations again and be another box office hit for Sony? With Marcel making her directing debut, the final movie in the series may be more of a gamble than the previous two. But there’s also no word on the film’s plot, characters, and additional “Spider-Man” characters at this point, so who knows what Hardy and Marcel are cooking up?