Not sorry about Venom: Tom Hardy franchise gets a new director in Kelly Marcel

The “Venom” team is getting the band back together.

After writing the first two films in the “Venom” franchise, Kelly Marcel will add director to her resume for the third superhero outing. Deadline reported on Friday that Marcel, a longtime screenwriter who also wrote the scripts for “Saving Mr. Banks” and “Fifty Shades of Grey,” will make her directorial debut with “Venom 3.” 

“Venom” has been a lucrative franchise for Sony and star Tom Hardy. The first film grossed a surprising $856 million worldwide and was directed by Ruben Fleischer. The follow-up film switched directors, with Andy Serkis stepping behind the camera for the symbiote sequel, but was another hit. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” grossed over $500 million worldwide after it came out in October of last year – a strong number for a pandemic release.

Marcel and Hardy work well together, she explained last year in an interview with Vulture to support the “Venom” sequel. “Tom has an amazingly creatively agile brain, so he can spitball ideas for hours,” she said of developing “Let There Be Carnage,” which also co-starred Woody Harrelson. “There was a lot of that, a lot of laughing. Then we whittled it down to what we thought it was, and then we spent in-person time in London with our producer Hutch Parker, holed up in a hotel room stress-testing the storylines we loved most.”

“Venom 3” will be produced by Marcel and Hardy, with a story by Marcel and Hardy. Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Amy Pascal, and Hutch Parker will also serve as producers on the film.

At the moment, specific plot details for the film are being kept under wraps, but it will likely pick up the story after “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” Whether Venom eventually ties into the Spider-Man franchise in any meaningful way is unclear – but “Carnage” did introduce the idea that Venom could connect with the official Marvel Cinematic Universe via the multiverse. (Sony and Marvel, a Disney-owned property, share Spider-man through an agreement that allows Spider-man to participate in the MCU while being distributed by Sony.)

“Venom 3” currently has no release date.

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