Woody Harrelson reteams with his ZOMBIELAND director Ruben Fleischer on Sony's upcoming Marvel Comics adaptation VENOM, which stars Tom Hardy as the unlucky sap who gets bonded with an alien symbiote to become the titular monstrous anti-hero. It has been said that Harrelson plays "a henchman of sorts" in the film, and during a recent interview with Collider he cautioned fans that they won't be seeing a whole lot of him in it… But he also teased that his character is in the film to set up a sequel.
I’m in a little fraction of this movie, but I’ll be in the next one, you know? So I haven’t read that script (for the sequel), but anyways, just rolled the dice."
Harrelson says he was drawn to VENOM by the involvement of Fleischer and Hardy, and the "really wonderful script".
That script was written by Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinkner, and Kelly Marcel, and while we don't have a synopsis for the film, Fleischer has said that it was inspired by two separate comic book storylines, Lethal Protector and Planet of the Symbiotes.
In Lethal Protector, Venom battled
five new offspring of the Venom Symbiote: Scream, Phage, Riot, Lasher, and Agony.
In Planet of the Symbiotes,
Earth is invaded by an army of symbiotes.
So it sounds like there's going to be a good amount of symbiote vs. symbiote action in this film.
Hardy and Harrelson are joined in the cast by Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Jenny Slate, Reid Scott, and Sope Aluko.
While we wait to hear exactly who Harrelson is playing in VENOM (and its potential sequel), the obvious assumption to make here is that he's Cletus Kasady, a natural born killer who merges with a symbiote to become Venom's greatest enemy, Carnage. Having Venom face off with a bunch of lesser symbiotes in the first film and save his baddest, most popular enemey for a sequel sounds like a solid franchise plan to me. If VENOM is successful enough to get a sequel. If it's not, there's going to be a lot of disappointed Carnage fans.
We still need more information on this one, but soon enough we'll know all of VENOM's secrets, as the film is scheduled to reach theatres on October 5th.