‘Venom: The Last Dance’ Director Kelly Marcel on Michelle Williams’ Absence and Those James Bond Rumors
Kelly Marcel and Tom Hardy are fitting dance partners for Eddie Brock and Venom’s final go-round in Venom: The Last Dance. The longtime screenwriter turned director has been friends with Hardy since the early 2000s, as they both worked across the street from one another in Southwest London. Marcel was employed at a video rental store, and after hitting it off one day, she soon started writing scenes for Hardy’s theater company that was run out of the first floor of Battersea’s The Latchmere pub. Eventually, Hardy brought Marcel in to do uncredited rewrites on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson (2008), something she’d again do years later on George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).
In the intervening years, she launched her career by selling Terra Nova to Amblin and Fox. It would go on to become TV’s most expensive series at the time, and despite creating the concept, she declined a lucrative offer to actually run the show. Instead, she went on to write Saving Mr. Banks and Fifty Shades of Grey. In 2017, Hardy called on her once more, but this time, it was in an official capacity as co-writer of Ruben Fleischer’s Venom (2018). The opportunity then paved the way for her to be a producing writer on Andy Serkis’ sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage (20221), and now, the writer-director of the trilogy capper, Venom: The Last Dance.
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“Towards the end of Venom 2, Sony asked if I would like to direct the third one. Tom and I then looked at each other and were like, ‘Yeah, that’s definitely something that should happen,’” Marcel tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was really a beautiful thing that they were going to allow us to see this movie from inception to the very end in our way.”
The third chapter in Eddie Brock’s unexpected bromance with a symbiote named Venom puts their relationship on center stage once more, as their union now creates an existential threat to the people of Earth.
Six years ago, it was not entirely known yet that Eddie and Venom would now be the primary “romantic” relationship of the franchise. At the end of Venom (2018), both Venom and the late Stan Lee, in a cameo role, encouraged Eddie to not give up on his former fiancée, Anne Weying, played by Michelle Williams. The groundwork had seemingly been established for a revival of their romance, but in the development of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, it was then realized that the heart of the franchise was Eddie and Venom’s love affair with each other. Thus, Anne became more of a supporting character who helps mend fences during a period in which Eddie and Venom are at odds. And now, with Venom: The Last Dance being a road movie where Eddie and Venom are on the run, Anne, who’s presumably still in San Francisco, has no presence or even a name check in the film.
Marcel confirms that there was a shift in focus after the first film.
“We do listen to the fans. After each movie, we go back and we look at what people liked and what people didn’t like. And it was very, very clear that people were very wedded to the relationship between Venom and Eddie. That was what they loved,” Marcel says. “The axis on which these movies spin is Venom and Eddie’s relationship, and it’s always been about them.”
In the middle of Venom: The Last Dance, Marcel puts Eddie Brock in a tuxedo during a stop in Las Vegas. For starters, she’d grown weary of Eddie’s Hawaiian shirt and Golden State Warriors t-shirt that was established in the coda of Spider-Man: No Way Home. But she was also motivated by a pop cultural factor outside of their fictional universe.
“There’s always been these rumors about [Tom] playing James Bond, so I may have been showing what Tom Hardy’s James Bond might look like,” Marcel admits mid-laugh.
Speaking of which, Marcel also recently found herself on a rumored shortlist of directors who may be in the mix for the next James Bond film. The list featured the names of Marcel, Edward Berger, David Michod, Yann Demange and Bart Layton.
“That’s an extraordinary list to be on. I was flabbergasted,” Marcel says. “There’s never been a female Bond director, and of course, when you see something like that, it’s just incredibly humbling. So I’m grateful to be mentioned alongside any of those brilliant, brilliant directors.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Marcel also addresses Venom spinoff possibilities and whether she knows what the MCU has planned for the Venom sample that remains in that universe.
Apparently, you’ve known Tom Hardy for over two decades. How did you first meet?
We met when I was working in a video store. He was running this little theater company in the pub across the road. It was sort of like a gym for actors, so that’s how we met. We started talking about the industry and things that we were both interested in, and we found that we shared a sensibility and a sense of humor. So I started writing scenes for his actors to workshop in that theater company. I’d already written some plays at the Edinburgh Festival, so I wasn’t coming from nowhere, but we were both very much unemployed [in the larger sense]. I was employed by a video store, and Tom would come over and help me give out DVDs, so our friendship grew from there.
According to the Internet, you did some writing for Tom on Bronson and Mad Max: Fury Road. Assuming those jobs were trials by fire, did they only deepen your bond?
Yeah, absolutely. We had written some TV shows together. We had gone out pitching, so those jobs weren’t the first times that we had worked together. When he was doing Bronson, he was having a tricky time realizing that character. So I came in to do some rewrites on it and help him find what it was he was trying to express in that movie. He’s brilliant in it, and it was astonishing to watch him every day. And then it was the same with Mad Max: Fury Road. So we’ve both worked together through our careers, and then we’ve obviously had our separate tangents, as well. But whenever Tom needs me, I’m there.
You wrote or co-wrote the last two Venom films, making you, Tom and Peggy Lu’s Mrs. Chen the three constants in the franchise. How did events unfold to where you landed in the director’s chair?
Yeah, I wrote Venom, I wrote and produced Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and towards the end of Venom 2, Sony asked if I would like to direct the third one. Tom and I then looked at each other and were like, “Yeah, that’s definitely something that should happen.” It was a great honor to be asked, and it was really a beautiful thing that they were going to allow us to see this movie from inception to the very end in our way. So it’s been beautiful to get to see these characters out.
It seems like you, Steven Knight and Chris Nolan know how to best work with Tom, so what’s the key to collaborating with him?
I think Tom works well with so many directors, but he loves Steve and Chris. Tom is a fountain of ideas. He is very alive in his imagination, and he is kind of a genius in the way that he keeps a character on its toes. He’s extraordinarily brave in how far he’s willing to go with a character, and as long as he feels safe and supported, then he’s going to give you everything he’s got. As a director, our job is to challenge him and get that amazing performance that he has within him to shine. But it’s all Tom. He comes with his characters fully formulated in his head. He is very much the creator of Venom and Venom’s voice. He very much knew who Eddie Brock was. My job was just to put the words in their mouths, and find fun and interesting things for him to do with those characters.
Who gets the credit for the hilarious running gag involving Eddie’s shoes?
(Marcel raises her hand.) As Tom will tell you, we want to have fun when we are making these movies. They’re hard work and long hours and long days. So whenever I’m writing these scripts, I’m always thinking about fun things that I can do, like stick Tom in a tank of water for two weeks or throw him off a plane. That’s just our thing with each other. We like playing and having fun, and because Eddie had ended up in a pair of Crocs, I thought it would be hilarious to have an action sequence in a pair of Crocs. That’s the dog fight. I then had him continue to lose shoes all the way through the movie just to see what he would do with that, and he was brilliant.
Venom: The Last Dance is a road movie, and therefore, Eddie and Venom don’t spend any time in San Francisco. Is that the main reason why Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) was absent from this one?
Yeah, we really wanted to isolate them. We wanted to take them away from their comfort zone. We wanted to take them away from everything they knew and everyone they loved, so that they really only had each other to rely on now. We knew that we wanted them to reach symbiosis with each other and decide that they were going to be the Lethal Protector, and that they were going to go on this journey together. And, of course, that quickly becomes very dangerous for them, because the very act of them being together means that the world is at risk. So they come to understand that the thing that they have chosen is actually their downfall, and so all of the characters from the previous movies — other than Peggy Lu’s Mrs. Chen — didn’t belong in this road trip story.
At the end of Venom (2018), both Venom and Stan Lee urged Eddie not to give up on Anne. So it seemed like the original plan was to rekindle Eddie and Anne’s romance until it became evident that the real love story was between Eddie and Venom. So is there some truth to that romantic pivot?
Yeah, I think so. We do listen to the fans. After each movie, we go back and we look at what people liked and what people didn’t like. And it was very, very clear that people were very wedded to the relationship between Venom and Eddie. That was what they loved, but they also loved Dr. Dan [Reid Scott] in Venom. So we were like, “Well, we’ve got to bring Reid back because everybody loves him.” So it just felt like the Venom 2 story was about these two characters who have been forced to live together and are driving each other absolutely crazy. It’s the seven year itch where they are forced to split up, and that was the trajectory of that movie, whilst also facing Carnage and Shriek. The axis on which these movies spin is Venom and Eddie’s relationship, and it’s always been about them.
You reference MCU events at the start, so how involved were those executives on this go-round?
They weren’t [involved] because, where we find ourselves in the MCU, it’s already something that we had shot.
The coda in Spider-Man: No Way Home …
Yeah, it already existed.
There’s still that sample or piece of Venom that’s left in the MCU version of that Mexico-set bar. Is it anyone’s guess what the plan is for that?
I think it’s anyone’s guess at this point.
Most notable actors these days have worked on comic book projects, but Rhys Ifans played Dr. Curt Connors/Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). Chiwetel Ejiofor also played a villain named Mordo in the MCU’s Doctor Strange movies. Thus, was there any hand-wringing over their castings?
No, none of us really thought about that. They’re brilliant actors, and they play different roles. For me, it was just about having the right actors for these parts, and I can’t imagine anyone but Rhys playing Martin. I also can’t imagine anyone other than Chiwetel playing Strickland. They’re amazing actors, and I’m so grateful we got to work with them. So none of us really thought about their prior characters that they had played.
Was it bizarre to direct the director of the last Venom movie?
(Laughs.) Oh my God, I love Andy [Serkis] so much. We all love Andy. We knew on Venom 2 that he was going to be this [Knull] character, should we be able to bring the character into this movie. He was the only person we asked, and of course, he was thrilled and excited. He’s one of the greatest voice actors there is. Knull is also mocap and CGI, and so it was brilliant [to work together]. It was like a reunion. Andy and I are friends, so it was just very, very fun to get to spend some time with him on this. It felt like a full circle in a way
When Knull’s foot soldier-type creatures eat humans and spray their blood in response, are they filtering the blood because it doesn’t agree with their systems?
Yes, if you look at their mouths, their mouths are a woodchipper. So they were conceived to have woodchipper mouths that spit out the back. They have a vent on the back of their head, and whatever goes through, the remains must come out.
Between the Spider-Man: No Way Home coda and half this movie, Eddie is dressed in the same dreadful vacation outfit. Was the tuxedo glow-up your response to that wardrobe? Could you not take it anymore?
(Laughs.) It was [a response]. Tom is a most handsome man, and I wanted to see him in a tuxedo. I also loved the idea of him doing all of the third-act action sequence in an amazing suit and looking incredible. I felt like Eddie deserved it.
I realize Tom’s contract is up and that Venom: The Last Dance is regarded as the last one, but Venom is still a valuable franchise to Sony. So if inspiration ever struck you and Tom, do you think the studio would welcome a Venom 4?
You’d have to ask Sony. I don’t know. Yes, it is the end of a contract. We were asked to do three, we’ve delivered three, and who knows what the future holds. I hope that we’ve laid groundwork for them in this third movie with other characters and other symbiotes and bad guys that they can run with, should they choose. But this is the last one for Venom and Eddie.
Yeah, this movie leaves one particular character in a very interesting place. Have you given some forethought to future spinoffs? Or was it purely a gift for the studio to run with as they please?
We have definitely given it forethought, so we definitely know what those stories could be, should they want them. But they are a gift to the studio, yes.
You knew you made it when you sold your first show [Terra Nova] and got your first writing credit on a movie [Saving Mr. Banks]. You again knew you made it when you directed Venom: The Last Dance. But you really knew you made it when you found yourself in James Bond-related rumors. Was that pretty flattering regardless of whether it’s true or not?
(Laughs.) Yeah, that’s an extraordinary list to be on. I was flabbergasted. There’s never been a female Bond director, and of course, when you see something like that, it’s just incredibly humbling. So I’m grateful to be mentioned alongside any of those brilliant, brilliant directors. [Writer’s Note: The rumored list is as follows: Marcel, Edward Berger, David Michod, Yann Demange and Bart Layton.]
When I saw Tom in the tuxedo, I did think of James Bond.
So did I!
I then wondered if you were potentially leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.
(Laughs.) Well, there’s always been these rumors about him playing James Bond, so I may have been showing what Tom Hardy’s James Bond might look like.
***
Venom: The Last Dance opens Oct. 25 in movie theaters.
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