Venom was an unexpected breakout hit for Sony's Spider-Man spinoff franchise, earning $856 million worldwide, despite massive Marvel fan backlash, and waves of highly negative critical reviews. Venom 2 was put into production backed by a lot of fan hopes that it will improve on the deficiencies of the original film's thin hackneyed story, and they will be getting a new director to hopefully present it all in a much better way.

A new breakdown in Heat Vision has a lot of Marvel fans excited, as presents the rumor that Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit and Planet of the Apes star Andy Serkis may be in talks to direct Venom 2!

As Heat Vision reports:

"Serkis flew to Los Angeles for meetings with Sony brass earlier this week. It's just meetings and presentations — there's no offer at this stage — so don't toss that confetti just yet. He is one of several filmmakers in the mix, sources say, as Sony carefully weighs who will direct the follow-up to a movie that made $856 million at the global box office."

It's further reported that Sony wants to roll cameras on Venom 2 before November. If true, it means that a director will have to be confirmed sooner before later. Given the creature-feature nature of Venom, there are probably a lot of fans who want to see Serkis - *the* guru of modern motion-capture performance at the helm of this project. Not just because of Serkis' proven ability to create compelling CGI creature characters (franchise star Tom Hardy nailed that challenge in the original), but because Serkis has the right sensibility for supposed story of Venom 2.

The post-credits scene of Venom introduced to Woody Harrelson's Cletus Kasady, the infamous serial killer who goes on to become the symbiote-enhanced killer known as Carnage in the comics. The scene all but screamed Carnage's arrival in Venom 2, which could either set up or directly adapt a Marvel Comics crossover event like "Maximum Carnage", which saw Venom having to team with Spider-Man and other heroes to stop Carnage and his gang of monstrous killers from massacring their way across Manhattan.

With Cletus Kasady on the board, and suggestion that we could see Tom Hardy's Venom and Tom Holland's Spider-Man crossover sooner before later, Venom has all the potential of being one of the biggest Marvel event movies outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise. Just more reason that fans want Venom director Ruben Fleischer exchanged for someone more capable of telling a cohesive and sensible creature-horror superhero film.

Venom 2 is slated for release on October 2, 2020.

