Venom Creator Todd McFarlane Talks ‘Balancing Act’ in ‘Let There Be Carnage’ Ahead of 4K/Blu-ray Release (Exclusive)

Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the sequel to 2018’s Venom, opened in theaters on Oct. 1 and very quickly became one of the biggest movies of 2021. Now, ahead of the film’s 4K/Blu-ray release, Venom co-creator Todd McFarlane is opening up about the sequel’s brilliant “balancing act” of humor, fright, and drama. Speaking exclusively to PopCulture.com, McFarlane addressed the almost Odd Couple nature of Venom and Eddie Brock’s relationship this time around and noted that he thinks mixing more comedy into comic book movies is a great way to grab the audience’s attention.

“It’s interesting that some of the more successful superhero movies have sort of a lightness to them or a touch of humor every now and then in them,” McFarlane explained, “instead of them being sort of dark and morose or super heavy or something like that. So I thought it was interesting on the first movie, I was sitting back to go, ‘Okay.’ Because it’s a balancing act. Right? Because you’ve got the monster. You know? And then you’ve got a little bit of humor.” He then cautioned, “If you maybe go one direction or the other, maybe you alienate a certain part of your audience.”

“Obviously, you saw the success of the first movie and now the second,” McFarlane continued, noting how both films did massive revenue, which indicates that fans were responding positively. He then offered, “They seem to have found that scale, to sit there and go, ‘Okay. We’re not going to scare the kids too much, but we’re also not going to laugh our way all the way through it. We’ll just sort of zigzag in between it and hope everybody goes for it.’”

When it comes to seeing Venom and Carnage finally face-off on the big screen, after all these years, McFarlane is just a happy comic book “geek” like everyone else watching the showdown. “Marvel’s obviously been around a long time. A lot of these mythos and even Venom now has been around for 30 years,” he explained. “There’s such a sort of a tapestry of character you can pull from, that we’re all … At least as geeks, we probably all got our hit-list of five or six we want to see, just like with Spider-Man. Who going to be the next bad guy? Or in The Avengers. Who’s going to be the next one to join the team and, or try to take over the world? Right? So we’re constantly doing it.” Venom: Let There Be Carnage is now available to purchase digitally and will land on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Dec. 14.