After Black Widow and The Suicide Squad underperformed at the box office there were whispers that Venom: Let There Be Carnage would see another last-minute delay. Fortunately, the opposite has turned out to be true, as yesterday Sony announced that the sequel will arrive two weeks earlier than planned on October 1st.
All eyes are on Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady/Carnage, one of the most dangerous characters in the Marvel Universe who has never been seen in live-action before. But though he’s hogging the limelight, we’re also going to get a few other neat characters worthy of attention.
One is Naomie Harris’ Frances Barrison/Shriek, who has sonic superpowers. She can use her voice to emit concussive blasts, but scarier is her ability to manipulate people’s emotions – especially given she can sense the darker elements in a person’s personality. Director Andy Serkis can’t wait for us to meet her, saying in an interview that:
“She is as psychotic as Cletus and quite the powerhouse. … I’ve worked with Naomie a number of times now, and she’s one of the best actresses I’ve ever worked with. We talked a lot about what her voice would be – she’s been kept in a soundproof box, unable to communicate verbally for 25 years. How do you make that believable, that this is the first time she’s talked in all that time?”
It seems that the movie will also follow the comics by having Carnage and Shriek in a romantic relationship, with the pair bonding over their mutual love of blood n’ guts:
“Frances Barrison and Cletus Kasady complement each other. It’s another of the film’s love stories: they have suffered trauma after trauma, they have been torn apart, and you long for them to get back together. When they do, it’s romantic, epic, operatic.”
The original Venom was a nice surprise, with it rightly overcoming a tepid critical response to triumph at the box office. Sony Pictures will be hoping this follows suit, though expectations are understandably tempered given that theater attendance is still being impacted by COVID. However, they’ll have been buoyed up by Shang-Chi doing better than expected, so fingers crossed this does similar business, and we can finally get that Spider-Man x Venom crossover we’ve all been craving.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage hits theaters on October 1st.
