Venom 2: 8 Directors Sony Should Hire
Who should be tasked with cleaning up this mess...
With the recent confirmation that a Venom sequel is now greenlit, Sony finds themselves in an interesting position.
Not only was Ruben Fleischer's Venom not a particularly good movie, but it was also one that Sony themselves didn't seem all that proud of. They knew exactly what they had on their hands, which was why they trimmed essentially the entire second act of the film off just weeks before release, much to the chagrin of Tom Hardy.
Nevertheless, the film found staggering success at the box office (partially thanks to a so-bad-it's-good reputation) and has now left Sony scrambling to figure out what to do with a sequel.
Do they commit to Woody Harrelson and his truly awful Annie wig? Or do they scrap everything and just let Tom Hardy run wild?
This week they took their first strong step in the right direction, announcing that Ruben Fleischer would not be returning for the sequel, which is a great thing. Fleischer's direction was dull at its best and painful at its worst. Now, Sony should turn there attention to one of these directors for Venom 2, because they would absolutely deliver a film that finally delivers on the promise of this character.
8. Leigh Whannell
Leigh Whannell is a talented writer and director who rose to prominence after writing and co-starring in the little-torture-porn-horror-film-that-could, Saw. He spent the better part of the next decade collaborating with Saw-director, James Wan, in a screenwriting capacity. Then, in 2015, he made the jump to directing for the first time, helming his own script with Insidious: Chapter 3.
But the film that seemed to truly bring Whannell into his own was one of last year's biggest cult smashes, Upgrade. Chronicling the tale of a man who is paralyzed from the neck down getting a chip installed called STEM, which gives him superhuman abilities and precision. As many people before me have pointed out, in a great many ways, Upgrade is actually the best Venom movie of 2018.
Whannell utilized innovative camera techniques, such as strapping an iPhone to Logan Marshall-Green and locking the image onto the actor, to capture visceral and affecting action sequences. Between this newly minted action pedigree and his decade-plus history of exploiting both graphically grisly R-rated violence and suspense-driven, PG-13 spookfests, Whannell would be a perfect choice for the sequel.
With a shoestring budget, he pulled off Upgrade and made it look like it cost more than the actual Venom movie did. If Sony were to throw a few more millions at him, he would undoubtedly craft something special.