Venom: The Last Dance revolves around Eddie Brock and his Symbiote attempting to stop Knull from escaping his prison on Klyntar. He requires their Codex to do so, and that's destroyed when Venom seemingly sacrifices himself.
The Xenophage are also defeated and the King in Black is left trapped but awake and eager to take his revenge. Venom: Let There Be Carnage director Andy Serkis voices the villain but reveals he was brought in relatively late in the day to help bring Knull to life.
Talking to Screen Rant at FAN EXPO San Francisco 2024 about his future as the character, the actor and filmmaker said, "Well, that's also very interesting. I really, genuinely have no idea. It was very much, 'Can you come in?' It was quite last minute, actually. 'Can you come in and do the voice for Knull?'"
"So, I came in and did it on the stage," Serkis continued. "Then there was talk of, 'This could go on. He’s quite a big character,' and I was like, 'Yeah, I know that.' Well, let's see what happens, actually."
Rumours have swirled for months that Knull will be Spider-Man 4's big bad, so if a return is planned, that's where we'll get to see more of Knull. Marvel Studios will need to better flesh out the villain and improve on the VFX utilised in Venom: The Last Dance as that face reveal drew a mixed response from fans and unflattering comparisons to Morbius.
When we talked to writer and director Kelly Marcel back in November, she revealed that Serkis was always hers and Tom Hardy's top choice to bring Knull to life on screen.
"So Knull actually was the first character we went in to design for this movie. Before Venom-Horse...Xenophage and Knull were the first two [characters] that went into the works in terms of design. We knew we had to get Knull right. He's a massive, massive fan favourite. We wanted to stick as close to the comics as possible in terms of what he looked like."
"We knew Andy Serkis would be Knull from Venom 2. He was our director on Venom 2; Tom and I were always talking on Venom 2 about what Venom 3 was going to be and we knew we wanted to introduce Knull in the way that we have."
"At the same time, looking at Andy Serkis every day as he's directing, [we're saying] 'Well, he's the greatest. Knull is CGI mo-cap and a lot of voice acting and there's only one person for that. He's the greatest. We always knew it would be Andy. We love Andy and it felt right. We've brought most of our team along with us for all three of these movies so we really want to keep it as a family. Andy is a massive part of the Venom family."
Venom: The Last Dance is now playing in theaters.