Tom Hardy reveals why he wanted Andy Serkis to direct Venom 2. The English actor played journalist and eventual symbiote host Eddie Brock in 2018's Venom, which was directed by Ruben Fleischer. The sequel, officially titled Venom: Let There Be Carnage, is set to release wide on October 1.
Venom 2 is to be the second film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe, which is the studio's attempt at a cinematic universe built around the friendly neighborhood hero and other associated Marvel characters. Though they currently have a deal with Marvel Studios that allows Spider-Man to exist within the MCU, their 2019 renegotiation stipulates the character is to be shared between them. Venom 2's director, Serkis, is best known as the actor behind pioneering motion-capture roles in The Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes franchises.
Despite this, Hardy told SR in an exclusive interview that it was he who first reached out to Serkis. The two have wanted to work together for some time now, and Venom 2 seemed like the perfect opportunity. It helped that Serkis came in with some directing experience:
I reached out to him. It was a unanimous decision, but within Sony. And when it came to the point of looking for the director for Venom 2 who would be the person that we felt would be most the right fit? You know, the right fit to push to the next level, you know, what we wanted to achieve. And obviously Andy covers bases immediately for me and Kelly, thinking... My partner in crime, Kelly Marcel. Andy has not only a language that works in two ways, he's directed in some aspects, an apprenticeship, or an internship if you like, with Peter Jackson on the Lord of the Rings, and Hobbits and stuff. He's taken care of second unit directing on that, and been privy to multiple sets on an epic scale, but he's also delivered, arguably, some of the greatest character depictions within fantasy in the last two decades. And he's arguably one of the best character actors we've got in our generation. So, he has a language as an actor, he has a language as a director. He has directed Breathe, he's directed Jungle Book. It's not his first rodeo, and I really like him. He's a cool guy, you know? And we wanted to work together for a long time, so it just makes so much sense that we had somebody who could see what we were trying to do, what we went to achieve on all of the levels, and on the size of the job that had to be had to be done, you know someone had to do it, and Andy was the guy.
In his interview with SR, Carnage-actor Woody Harrelson also touched on Serkis' hiring, saying both he and Hardy lobbied for him with the studio. "[W]hen it came down that he was doing it, I couldn't have been more thrilled," Harrelson said. "I'm an actor, so you got to have some insecurities. I mean, what actor doesn't? To be able to look behind the camera and see a very good friend of mine and Andy Serkis and someone I trust implicitly, it helped a lot."
While it's comforting to hear how excited the stars were to have Serkis directing, fans of Venom and Carnage as characters might be unsure of what to expect. As Hardy says, he has experience with directing on a blockbuster scale through The Hobbit films, but reviews for his first two solo outings, Breathe and Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, were somewhat mixed. Serkis has said Venom: Let There Be Carnage pushes its PG-13 rating to the limit, which is encouraging, but it might be wiser to withhold judgment until the film is more widely seen.
Source: SR
