See Woody Harrelson As Carnage In The Venom 2 Trailer

Woody Harrelson is about to take a seriously evil turn in his next film and now we've got a glimpse of Cletus Kassady/ Carnage in Venom 2

By Doug Norrie | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

carnage venom woody harrelson

Venom has been a rather unlikely addition to the comic book movie universe in that the “character” such as it were has had a complicated and not often virtuous place in the printed pages. But Tom Hardy hit it with fans as Eddie Brock and we are getting a sequel. This time around, the adversary will be a tough one and we are getting a look at how things are shaping up. Woody Harrelson will play Carnage in the aptly titled sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage and we have some of our first looks at how things will play out between the two. 

We long knew that Woody Harrelson would be weaving his way into the Venom universe after he appeared during the mid-credits scene in the first movie. The setup wasn’t subtle and it was known, even then that he’d be taking on the Cletus Kassady/ Carnage role from the original comic book stories. There wasn’t much ambiguity there with Kassady’s “origin story”, such as it were, being one-to-one from the printed pages. And man, does he ever look the creepy part. Check out the trailer for the sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage:

Woody Harrelson as Cletus Kassady becomes the archenemy of Eddie Brock/ Venom in pretty conventional ways if you consider super-human alien symbiosis “normal”. For our purposes, it’s fairly cut and dry. Kassady is a serial killer on death row for his crimes, but he is taken over by an offspring of sorts left behind by Venom. This causes the two, Kassady and Brock to be linked and they come at odds rather quickly. While Brock is working to coexist with Venom on a daily basis, laid out hilariously at the beginning of the trailer, Harrelson’s Kassady is clearly gearing up for a standoff between the two. In this way, Harrelson does seem to get back to some of his Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers roots. 

carnage venom woody harrelson

In the comic books, Cletus Kassady/ Carnage is a real problem for Venom, more powerful and better bonded than the original and this is likely to cause quite a few of problems in this next movie. Woody Harrelson looks like the perfect fit for the character. His smooth smile demeanor that clearly hides something inherently evil is clear before he even makes the transformation. And from there, Carnage clearly has no issues laying waste to anything and everything that stands in its way. 

It will be interesting to see how this next Venom movie performs with Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson set to do battle. The original was a massive hit at the box office, scoring more than $850 million at the box office on its $100 budget. Sitting outside the Marvel Universe right now has it in a weird spot with the characters, but fans didn’t seem to mind and showed up to the theaters in droves. But critics were less kind with the film sitting at just 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. The 81% audience score stands in clear juxtaposition. 

It won’t be long until we get Woody Harrelson in a full villain role. Venom: Let There Be Carnage is set to release this fall on September 24th.