Tom Hardy Reveals Crucial Carnage Location for Venom 2

Production is already underway on the upcoming Venom 2, and star Tom Hardy has posted a new photo from the set which has revealed a crucial location and perhaps a tease of what to expect. In Hardy’s (now deleted) photo, which you can see in full below, we can see the crest for “St. Estes Orphans” which also reads “Home for Unwanted Children.” In the pages of Marvel comics, “St. Estes Home for Boys” is the orphanage where serial killer turned super villain Cletus Kasady grew up, and seemingly gained a taste for murder.

This location made its debut in Amazing Spider-Man #361 in 1992 and also served as the first place where Spider-Man and Carnage had their first battle. A condemned relic, the building is also partially burned thanks to an “accident” that killed the administrator of the orphanage, which is implied to have been caused by Kasady. Given this, it seems likely that the location could be where Hardy’s Venom and Woody Harrelson’s Carnage do battle in the film at least once (there’s no way that they’re not fighting multiple times throughout).

Following the success of Joker, Sony is reportedly toying with the idea of making the second Venom movie an R-rated movie that would lean into some of the more horrific elements of Carnage. While Venom may kill sometimes, he does not revel in it the way Carnage — a symbiote spawned by Venom, which bonded to a serial killer — does. Of course, fans are unlikely to get their hopes up too high, since filmmaker Ruben Fleischer kept suggesting that the first Venom would maybe, probably, definitely, maybe be an R-rated flick before walking back on it in the last few months before release. Fleischer isn’t behind the camera this time as motion capture guru Andy Serkis takes the reins for the sequel, who you can see on set in the first photo above!

Casting rumors have revealed that Marvel supervillain Shriek will also be in Venom 2, suggesting that the film could actually be adapting Carnage’s second big kill spree in the comics – an event known as “Maximum Carnage.” In that story, Carnage breaks loose of Ravencroft Institute and gathers a gang of killers to terrorize NYC – starting with recruiting a fellow inmate named Shriek as his lieutenant / girlfriend. Again, that gang of killers requires Venom to reach out to Spider-Man for a helping hand – which has some Marvel fans speculating that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man will be in Venom 2, a crossover that’s now very much possibly under the terms of the renewed deal between Sony and Marvel Studios.

Venom 2 is scheduled to be released in theaters on October 2, 2020.