Almost every major blockbuster these days is envisioned as the first installment in a trilogy. Even if the studio doesn’t announce it right of the gate, you can guarantee that it’s the plan in the overwhelming majority of cases. Of course, that’s entirely dependent on box office performance, so by that metric we can safely assume that Venom 3 will be given an official green light sooner rather than later.
Ruben Fleischer’s opener made $850 million at the box office, and while Andy Serkis’ Let There Be Carnage won’t come anywhere close to that number, it’s nonetheless shaping up to be a major pandemic-era success. The buzz is steadily rising, with the credits scene in particular generating a ton of online chatter, while a brief 90-minute running time means that theaters will be able to screen it more times throughout the day.
In a new interview with Entertainment Tonight Canada, Tom Hardy explained what he wants to see from Venom 3, provided that it continues to operate by the standard rules of blockbuster world-building.
“With these things that come in threes at the moment, and if they progress further, then it’s normally the initial blocking of the infrastructure or a set of franchise movies will be one, two, and three, and done. So, when Venom 1 was presented, it was presented, if it was successful, with the two, and if that was successful, with the three. So one has to look at the whole overarching option. First, you establish a character. If people like it, then you take them on a journey. Obviously, Carnage, he’s a high priest in that aspect in the arcana of the characters. It’s like ‘Wow, you’ve got to go bigger’, or you go lateral and build the world you continue to unpack.”
That’s a very analytical approach coming from a guy who plays a CGI monster that loves to eat people’s heads, but as the leading man, producer and co-writer of Let There Be Carnage, Hardy is clearly one of the property’s major driving forces from a creative standpoint. Bigger doesn’t always mean better when you talk about superhero cinema, so let’s hope his thoughtful point of view yields the best possible version of Venom 3.