Venom 2 Likely Won’t Involve Riz Ahmed’s Riot

Venom 2 Updates: Considering the end of 2018’s movie Venom, British actor Riz Ahmed who played the villain Carlton Drake (a.ka. Riot) says that the audience shouldn’t expect to see him in Venom 2.

The movie also starred Tom Hardy as journalist Eddie Brock, who bonds with an alien symbiote to become the titular antihero.

After COVID-19 pushed it out of its original release spot in October 2020, the 2018 sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage, is all set to release in June 2021

The British-Pakistani Ahmed is the first Asian man to win an acting Emmy for his performance in HBO’s 2014 mini-series The Night Of. He has been a rising star since his breakout role in Nightcrawler the same year, and that ambit has only continued in 2020.

For Mogul Mowgli, which he also produced and co-wrote, he earned some praise but it was his performance in Sound of Metal as a drummer that earned Ahmed his Oscar buzz.

He’s also well known in some big Hollywood franchises, as Star Wars fans might recognize him as Imperial defector Bodhi Rook in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Venom 2: Riz Ahmed’s Riot

Even after what happened at the end of the first movie, some still wondered if his character could return in the sequel as death is often far from the end in the world of superheroes.

But in a recent interview, Ahmed confirmed saying, “I think I’m done in Venom, Dude got blown up in a spaceship.” Saying how unlikely it is his return in the sequel.

While Riot won’t be returning in Venom 2, Hardy and Michelle are both slated to resume their roles. Woody Harrelson, who appeared in a post-credits scene as Cletus Cassady (a.k.a Carnage), is expected to play a major role in the story, hence the sequel’s official title, Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

British actress Naomie Harris will be seen playing Shriek, the canonical Spider-Man villain while the characters of Stephen Graham and Sean Delaney are still unannounced.

When Ahmed’s character Riot blew up in Venom, fans saw it as a mixed missed opportunity for the franchise, but it was a relief when Venom2 was released.

As talented as Ahmed is, the reaction to Riot as a character was mixed, and Carnage offers a much more exciting opportunity to take Sony’s cinematic Spider-verse to the next level.

However, the studio has mishandled the chance in past with a non-MCU Spider-Man series. If the same happens again with Venom: Let There Be Carnage, not giving an actor like Ahmed a juicier role in the first place could be looked back on as a key reason why.