There's not much to know about the VENOM sequel just yet, but one thing we can assume is that it's going to look mighty fine. THR has reported that three-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson has signed on to shoot VENOM 2 for director Andy Serkis.
Robert Richardson is fresh off of serving as director-of-photography on ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, and you only need to take a quick glance at his filmography to know that the man knows his way around the camera. Richardson has frequently worked with Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, and Martin Scorsese on films such as PLATOON, WALL STREET, JFK, CASINO, KILL BILL VOL. 1 & 2, THE AVIATOR, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, SHUTTER ISLAND, HUGO, DJANGO UNCHAINED, THE HATEFUL EIGHT, and more. He also served as cinematographer on Andy Serkis' directorial debut BREATHE, so there's some familiarity there. Richardson will be replacing Matthew Libatique, who shot the first film.
Tom Hardy is naturally set to return as Eddie Brock/Venom, and it's expected that Michelle Williams will be back as well as Woody Harrelson, who played Cletus Kasady in VENOM's post-credit sequence. It's still early days yet, but Serkis said that he's already "got some very clear ideas about the journey I’d like to see visually and how we can take the characters into another dimension." Before it was revealed that he wouldn't be helming the sequel thanks to his ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP commitments, VENOM director Ruben Fleischer had said that he was looking forward to witnessing Woody Harrelson explore his darker side. "When you think about a guy named Cletus, and off the comic book pages what he might be like, this insane serial killer, if you think about Woody in Natural Born Killers and the menace that he brought to that character, I think it’s really exciting to think about him going to that darker place again," Flesicher said. "Because recently he’s been playing more kind of heroic or comedic parts so to see him going to that kind of darker space, I think, is going to be incredible."
The VENOM sequel is expected to hit theaters on October 2, 2020.