After being announced that Andy Serkis was one of the directors in talks to direct Venom 2, it has now become official. Andy Serkis has just closed his deal to direct the sequel.
Serkis flew to Los Angeles the week of July 22 to meet with Sony execs on the project and was one of several filmmakers in the mix for the job. This will be Serkis’ third directorial effort, after the 2017 drama Breathe and last year’s non-Disney take on the Rudyard Kipling stories, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, which ended up on Netflix after being made at Warner Bros.
Serkis is best known for his motion capture and performance capture acting work as Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. He got a taste of being a director with second unit directing by reteaming with Jackson for The Hobbit trilogy. He played the villain Snoke in the recent Star Wars films, as well as bad guy Klaw in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther & brought more motion capture expertise to the new Planet of the Apes trilogy. His expertise with CG and performance capture technology is one of the factors that landed him the Venom 2 job.
Kelly Marcel wrote the script for Venom 2. Ruben Fleischer helmed 2018’s Venom, which starred Tom Hardy & Michelle Williams & while it wasn’t a hit with critics, it grossed a massive $856 million worldwide.
