We know which one we'd pick...
29% on Rotten Tomatoes.
35% on Metacritic.
But $856 million at the worldwide box office, combined with a huge love for anything Tom Hardy-related.
Yeah, the first Venom movie won't be considered a classic by, well,
anyone, but nobody expected it to make that much money either, so obviously a sequel is on the way.
So far, only Tom Hardy has been confirmed for
Venom 2, and original director Ruben Fleischer has been busy on
the Zombieland sequel, so the hunt is on to find his replacement.
Variety are reporting that Sony have narrowed it down to three choices, which we will go through right here:
Andy Serkis - best known as the actor behind the special effects as Gollum and King Kong and Caesar in the rebooted Planet Of The Apes movies, he has turned his hand to directing of late, but it hasn't gone so great. 2017's Breathe was a based-on-a-true-story weepie that made less than $5 million at the box office, and critics didn't much care for it either. Then his big-budget take on The Jungle Book, titled Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle, was dropped by Warner Brothers right before release, and ended up going straight to Netflix. Again, critics gave it a big shrug.
Rupert Wyatt - directed Serkis in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes back in 2011, but his career has hit the skids since then. The Gambler was a, eh, gambling drama with Mark Wahlberg that next-to-nobody went to see, and his sci-fi thriller Captive State was released in the States in March this year, and just never arrived in cinemas on this side of the pond (the $8.6 million total box office can't have helped). He was also lined up to direct the Channing Tatum-starring Gambit solo movie, before Fox and Disney quietly dropped it entirely from their slate.
Travis Knight - A two-time Oscar-nominee, with his first movie Kubo And The Two Strings one of the best (and most underseen) animated movies of recent years. He was also the man behind
the best Transformers movie to date, 2018's Bumblebee, which, again, not enough people went to see. He would 100% be our pick to take over the Venom franchise.
Which isn't to say that this shortlist won't suddenly be expanded upon should another director throw their hat into the ring, but they'd want to get picking pretty soon, as Venom 2 is due to arrive in Irish cinemas on 2 October 2020.
