‘Venom 2’ Is Starting to Sound a Lot Like ‘Maximum Carnage’
Venom 2 is due in theaters in less than a year, and the film is still adding characters. Deadline says Carnage is the “presumptive primary villain” because of his appearance in the post-credits scene from the first Venom (where he was played by a red-haired Woody Harrelson), and now they say that Sony is looking for an actress to cast alongside Carnage as Shriek, who was a mainstay of Spider-Man and Venom comics throughout the 1990s, basically as Carnage’s sidekick and partner in crime.
Both characters were featured prominently in the epic Maximum Carnage series that crossed over between all four monthly ’90s Spider-Man comics and became one of the decade’s signature storylines. So if you have Venom and Carnage and Shriek, you have a movie that is really starting to sound like an adaptation of Maximum Carnage (minus Spidey himself, of course).
If you’re unfamiliar with Shriek, here’s a little background on her origin:
A drug dealer named Frances Barrison became the volatile Shriek after severe trauma allow her latent mutant powers to emerge. In the comics, those powers include sonic energy blasts, flight, and the ability to stir up dark and violent emotions in others.
Deadlines notes that “the casting process is underway but so far the field of candidates for the Shriek role has been expanding, not narrowing ... the filmmakers are ‘looking mostly at unknowns right now.’” Shriek tends to be as deranged and violent as Carnage, so you’ll need an actress, known or unknown, who can pull off a big transformation.
Directed by Andy Serkis and once again starring Tom Hardy, Venom 2 is scheduled to open in theaters on October 2, 2020.
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