Venom: The Last Dance director explains why Michelle Williams doesn’t return this time around

The Sony Spider-verse continues with Venom: The Last Dance. Tom Hardy is reprising the role of Eddie Brock / Venom for this sequel, and he is joined in the cast by Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Clark Backo (Letterkenny), and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). Ejiofor is not playing his Doctor Strange character, Baron Mordo, since the Venom films are set in a different universe than the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Temple plays a scientist who is doing research on the symbiotes, while Ejiofor leads a team to hunt down Brock and Venom as they are now on the run from authorities.

One name that isn’t listed in the cast is Michelle Williams, who portrayed Eddie Brock’s ex-girlfriend, Anne Weying, in both Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The Hollywood Reporter sat down to talk with Venom: The Last Dance director Kelly Marcel, where she explained that taking Brock and Venom on the run meant sacrificing Williams’ character. Marcel explained, “Yeah, we really wanted to isolate them. We wanted to take them away from their comfort zone. We wanted to take them away from everything they knew and everyone they loved, so that they really only had each other to rely on now.”

She continues, “We knew that we wanted them to reach symbiosis with each other and decide that they were going to be the Lethal Protector, and that they were going to go on this journey together. And, of course, that quickly becomes very dangerous for them, because the very act of them being together means that the world is at risk. So they come to understand that the thing that they have chosen is actually their downfall, and so all of the characters from the previous movies — other than Peggy Lu’s Mrs. Chen — didn’t belong in this road trip story.”

While Marcel co-wrote the last two, she explained how she took the reins behind the camera for this entry, “Yeah, I wrote Venom, I wrote and produced Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and towards the end of Venom 2, Sony asked if I would like to direct the third one. Tom and I then looked at each other and were like, “Yeah, that’s definitely something that should happen.” It was a great honor to be asked, and it was really a beautiful thing that they were going to allow us to see this movie from inception to the very end in our way. So it’s been beautiful to get to see these characters out.”