VENOM sequel adds Shriek to the rogues’ gallery

The sequel to 2018’s Venom has added a second villain: Shriek, an antagonist with the ability to manipulate sound.

According to a report in Deadline, Shriek will be joining the villainous Carnage (Woody Harrelson) when Venom 2 is released on October 2^nd, 2020. Tom Hardy is returning as Eddie Brock, and motion-capture master Andy Serkis will be directing the sequel (the original was directed by Ruben Fleischer, who has since departed from the franchise).

While the news that the villain will appear in the movie is official, there is no word who will be portraying the character on the big screen, and Deadline reports that an unknown actor may be cast in the role. In a previous appearance of Shriek on the animated Ultimate Spider-Man television series, voice actor extraordinaire Ashley Eckstein played the character.

Shriek made her first appearance on the page in 1993’s Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage. In that story, Cletus Kasady was able to take advantage of a mutation he had undergone during exposure to a symbiote in order to escape from prison by spontaneously generating a copy of the alien and once again transforming into Carnage. In addition to freeing himself from incarceration, he also rescued Shriek, and together the pair gathered more allies to battle against Spider-Man.

Shriek’s powers include the ability to control sound in a plethora of different ways, including as a method of controlling peoples’ emotions and to deliver concussive blows.

In the Marvel comics, Shriek is a mutant whose powers are activated as a result to exposure to the Darkforce Dimension through an encounter with Cloak. While Darkforce has previously appeared onscreen in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Cloak & Dagger and Marvel Studios has regained control of the mutants, it is unclear whether or not Venom 2’s incarnation of Shriek will incorporate these elements into her origin.