Despite Tom Hardy’s Venom seemingly having his hands full with the long-awaited arrival of Woody Harrelson’s Carnage, Venom: Let There Be Carnage star Stephen Graham has teased another villain for Eddie Brock and his symbiote pal to deal with. Graham is due to play Detective Patrick Mulligan, who hopes to use Brock to find the remains of Kasady’s murder victims, an obsessive task that has left him bitter and angry.
“He’s got a chip on his shoulder for a lot of reasons. There was a major incident as a young rookie, where he shot a young girl – it mentally scarred him and he lost the hearing in his left ear, which became a disability for his police career and got him assigned to menial jobs. He was constantly overlooked by the hierarchy of the police system, and he’s an angry, bitter man.”
Stephen Graham added that Mulligan is quickly irked by Eddie Brock thanks to the journalist being given an interview with the infamous killer, something which he believes he should be given instead.
“Eddie is getting the last interview with Cletus Kasady – something he feels he should be entitled to, and not some snotty rogue reporter.”
Starting off on the wrong side of Graham’s aggrieved detective is sure to cause Eddie Brock all manner of problems as it is, but things could be about to get even worse for the crusading journalist should Mulligan follow the arc he does in the pages of Marvel comics. While it has not yet been confirmed, Mulligan will be most familiar to comic book fans as the host for the symbiote known as Toxin.
Created by Peter Milligan and Clayton Crain, Toxin is feared to be the strongest and most dangerous of the symbiote race, and has connections with Carnage, having been spawned by him in some versions of his backstory. With this in mind, as well as the idea of the ludicrously talented Stephen Graham joining Hardy and Harrelson as another symbiote surely being far too good for Sony to pass up, it seems that Mulligan will be causing issues for both Brock and his alter ego.
Directed by Andy Serkis from a screenplay by Kelly Marcel, and based on a story she wrote with Tom Hardy, Venom: Let There Be Carnage finds Hardy starring once again as Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist who is the host of an alien symbiote that imbues him with super-human abilities and a violent alter-ego known as Venom. The symbiotic bromance will be challenged more than ever before thanks to the arrival of Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady, an insane psychotic serial killer who becomes the host of an alien symbiote known as Carnage.
Serkis recently described the movie as a “love story”, though perhaps not the kind of love story you’d expect. “It’s very much about the extraordinary relationship between symbiote and host,” the filmmaker explained. “Any love affair has its pitfalls, its high points and low points; Venom and Eddie’s relationship absolutely causes problems and stress, and they have a near-hatred for each other. But they have to be with each other – they can’t live without each other. That’s companionship – love – the things that relationships are really about.”
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on October 1, 2021, after being delayed from an initial October 2020 date due to the ongoing global situation. This comes to us from the official Sony website.