The unexpectedly huge financial success of 2018's Venom had a lot to do with the hilarious chemistry between lead Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and the alien symbiote Venom that attaches itself to him. Now that the sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage is set to release, the director of the movie Andy Serkis remarked in Sony's production notes that the relationship between Eddie and Venom has come to resemble an unusual love story that will drive the plot of the upcoming film.

"The film is a love story - but not the love story you might think. It's very much about the extraordinary relationship between symbiote and host. Any love affair has its pitfalls, its high points and low points; Venom and Eddie's relationship absolutely causes problems and stress, and they have a near-hatred for each other. But they have to be with each other - they can't live without each other. That's companionship - love - the things that relationships are really about."

While Venom and Eddie manage to save the day on occasion, the two are far from being heroic characters. Eddie has a self-centered approach to life, while Venom has no compunction about eating people if Eddie does not stop him. According to producer Avi Arad, the Eddie/Venom dynamic is lined with pitfalls that the characters must learn to navigate in order to co-exist.

"Obviously there is danger and mistrust in the beginning, but they've learned to live with each other. It's become a complicated marriage. Their codependence forces them to stay together, even though they've had it with each other. They're going to have to come to an understanding."

While Venom started out as a Spider-Man villain, the character proved popular enough to spin off with his own comic series that depicted him as an anti-hero, complete with his own roster of villains. Chief among them is Cletus Kasady, a serial killer who takes a portion of Venom's power to become the malevolent symbiote "Carnage."

Woody Harrelson will essay the role of Cletus/Carnage in the upcoming film. The immensely powerful and merciless villain's arrival should be reason enough for Eddie and Venom to set their differences aside for the time being and work together.

To make matters worse, there will be other antagonistic symbiotes in the mix, from Shriek (Naomie Harris) to Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham), who in the comics becomes Toxin, although that particular symbiote's presence has not been confirmed in the movie yet.

With the arrival of so many characters from the comics, the big elephant in the room remains the question of whether or not Tom Holland's Spider-Man will be making an appearance in the movie, perhaps as part of his own dimension-hopping adventures in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

After yet another release date reshuffling, Venom 2 is now set to arrive in theaters on October 1 rather than October 15, with tickets expected to go on sale on Wednesday, September 8. This news arrives from ComicBook.com.