"Venom: Let There Be Carnage," Sony's symbiotic sequel to 2018's San Francisco-set first film about the Marvel Comics antihero that opened in theaters Friday, is a bit of a Bay Area sightseeing tour.
Some scenes take place in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, with others shot at city landmarks like Coit Tower, Grace Cathedral, the Palace of Fine Arts and even Anchor Brewery, disguised as a police station. Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock, a journalist whose body is also the host to an alien symbiote with an appetite for humans named Venom, also finds a murder victim at Rodeo Beach in Marin County.
Each of the locations posed challenges for the $110 million blockbuster, but perhaps none were as involved as shooting on location at San Quentin State Prison, as the filmmakers told SFGATE's Dan Gentile this week.
Teased following the credits of the first film, Brock visits San Quentin for an interview with serial killer Cletus Kasady. Kasady, played by Woody Harrelson, bites Brock's arm and gets a taste of his symbiote-infected blood. That leads Kasady to have a symbiote of his own, the Carnage, propelling the film into its titular confrontation.
Director Andy Serkis and location manager Patrick Ranahan told the outlet they only shot a few interior scenes at the prison, but the ones they did required intensive security screenings from prison staff.
"Bringing in a crew of that many people into a maximum-security prison, it was amazing," Ranahan said. "Every truck had to be looked at, every single piece of equipment. You can't leave a screwdriver in there."
Serkis quipped to the outlet he didn't "think many people got out" after filming some scenes in the prison yard, noting that the shoot was "brilliantly handled" by prison staff.
Still, it wasn't lost on the filmmakers they were filming in a facility that held the state’s only execution chambers as recently as 2019, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on state executions.
"We built an entry gate, and that entry gate was built off of the execution chamber," Ranahan recalled. "It was right off death row. [The lieutenant] said, ‘You can’t open that door.' "
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