Thanks to the ungodly amount of money Venom made at the worldwide box office in 2018, the potential for a future Venom-verse is as wide the character's Tumblr page is thicc. First up: Variety reports that a direct sequel to director Ruben Fleischer's anti-hero tale is in the works at Sony with Kelly Marcel—who co-wrote Venom along with Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg—returning to pen the script. Tom Hardy will be back as the lobster-diving Eddie Brock and the voice of his symbiotic alien pal Venom, as will Michelle Williams as Anne Weying. Sony will kick off the search for a new director soon, as Fleischer will be brains-deep filming Zombieland 2.

Venom was a straight-up surprise last year. Audiences were first introduced to the long-awaited adaptation through a teaser that did not feature Venom, and then a trailer that did feature Venom threatening to eat a man's limbs until he looked like a turd in the wind. We all had some yucks over that on the world wide web until Venom debuted to a record-breaking $80 million in October on its way to a massive $855 million haul worldwide.

The Venom sequel will presumably pick up the story thread left dangling by the first film's mid-credits scene, which—*spoilers* if you still haven't sampled the many insane joys of this film—introduced Woody Harrelson and a downright abominable wig as Kletus Kassidy, a.k.a the longtime homicidal Venom nemesis known as Carnage.

Back in November, Sony reportedly set aside July 10, 2020 and October 2, 2020 for two yet-confirmed superhero movies from their slate. Given Venom's extraordinary October success in 2018, it's pretty close to set in stone that a sequel will fall nicely into that October 2 slot. The other will more than likely go to the Morbius movie adaptation starring Jared Leto as Marvel's "living vampire".