In news that’s likely to crack the comics Internet in half, Sony Pictures is trudging forward with Venom, a potential Spider-Man spinoff starring the villainous symbiote.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio hopes the project could provide a boost to the aging Spider-Man movie franchise, the same way Fox has used Wolverine to prolong the life of X-Men.
Jacob Estes (The Gifted, Mean Creek) had been commissioned to pen a draft, but Sony is looking for writers to take another shot at it.
The trade paper points out that the studio faces a few hurdles in developing Venom, including casting: Sony apparently isn’t sure Spider-Man 3’s Topher Grace could carry a tentpole feature.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:16 am
I’m sure this will bring venom fans to the theatre, but I’m not sure it’ll bring a regular audience. Unlike the Wolverine picture, there isn’t a strong actor allready associated with the character who can carry a movie.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:29 am
No. It’s not that Topher Grace can’t carry a tentpole feature. It’s that Venom can’t carry a tentpole feature.
If they want to revitalize the aging Spider-Man franchise they need to do a really good, quality Spider-Man flick again. Forget the stupidity that was Spider-Man 3 and let Sam Raimi do his stuff on a kick butt Spider-Man 4. Seems to me that Raimi knows how to do it right, but gets muddled down when the suits decide they know how to do it better.
I think Vulture would make for a decent Spidey flick. Do the obligatory origin, and then make him a total scary menace in the sky, swooping down and attacking people around New York. Think of the aerial fight scenes we could have.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:31 am
‘Cause, you know, Venom was soooo popular in the Spiderman 3….
July 31st, 2008 at 9:43 am
Move over, Catwoman and Elektra…
July 31st, 2008 at 10:04 am
…What, again?
July 31st, 2008 at 10:06 am
Venom could’ve been ok in Spidey 3. If he was the only frickin’ villain. Unfortunately, using a poor foundation set in Spidey 3 to build a Venom movie is idiocy. This strikes me as a very bad studio decision by Sony and more of a way to stymie Marvel Studios use of Spidey and Spidey related characters for non-comic marketing.
Sony really doesn’t seem to want to accept that Marvel had every right to sue them for that debacle a few years ago.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:39 am
You know, alot of fans didn’t like Venom in Spidey 3 and I don’t quite understand why. Most people say it’s because he wasn’t a hulking monster like the comics. But if you look at the way Mcfarlane drew him when he first introduced the charecter, he drew him in the same dimentions that he did Eddie Brock. Just because symbiote covers him doesn’t mean he should quadruple in size. And the snarling, open jaw, tounge hanging out, syliva dripping, Zombie “I’ll eat your brains” look and voice was’nt introduced till long after either. I think Venom was very true to his original design. And that pleases me.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:56 am
@STL Nick — great points
how can they compare venom to wolverine? wolverine was basically the star of the first 3 x-man, venom was a throw in villain in SP3. not to mention behind spidey (possilby behind hulk and cap but thats arguable these days) wolverine is the most popular character marvel has. venom is a villain who hasn’t had 3 movies for audiences to build a relationship with the was wolverine has as a hero.
doenst really matter, this will never get made.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:56 am
I think it’s long past time time we agree to retire all iterations of “crack the internet in half” permanently.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:12 am
Just curious: Does anyone know if and/or when the movie rights to Spider-Man and X-Men revert to Marvel Studios?
July 31st, 2008 at 11:29 am
haha that piece of art is fan art, done by a dude on SHH–thestarvingartist.
resume conversation.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:36 am
A vemon movie is a very, very, VERY bad idea. Rami blew it BIG time by not making Venom the ONLY villain for an upcoming Spiderman 4 movie. Vemon’s origin should have STARTED in Spiderman 3, but Sandman should have been the movie’s primary villain, instead of the 2 of them teaming up like some cheap wrestling gimic. No…it’s much too late to make Venom an interesting character now. Had he been the main villain in Spiderman 4, that movie could have very well have topped The Dark Knight’s success. But as it is now…the Spiderman franchise is all downhill from this point forward. It will NEVER again see the numbers it did for Spiderman 3…NEVER. It’s now on the same path as the Superman franchise, The Burton/Schumaker Batman, RoboCop and even the X-Men movies that had great beginnings. Damn…what a shame, too. The Spiderman franchise HAD 1 more hit under its belt (Spidey Vs Venom), but Rami forced it into the 3rd movie. The best thing Rami can do now is bring McFarlane’s “Torment” (Spidey Vs the Lazrd) to the big screen. It’s really the ONLY thing he can do to generate enough excitement about this franchise, at this point.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:27 pm
A Venom spinoff would be interesting if shot as a serious horror film. As a superhero comic film, it’ll fail. Guaranteed.
A horror film where we get a couple of flashbacks to the symbiote exploding, then seeing a few pieces land on the ground, crawl into the sewere, where it latches onto someone a la Alien, and the ensuing chaos along the lines of Mimic…man, THAT would be a movie to pay money for.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:39 pm
My soon to be 5 year old nephew loves Venom, LOVES him. The whole tongue-sticking out, threatening to eat brains thing? Finds that hilarious (largely because he doesn’t really understand how one could do the latter, for as he’s explained to me: “you can’t eat brains, they’re in your head!”).
Judging from the merchandising patterns, Venom’s core appeal seems to lie in the 16 and under set, rather than the adult comic fan. The problem is that he’s going to be really tough to pull off on his own and still get that PG-13 rating I’m sure the studio is aiming for.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I disagree with Jorge’s comment. Todd McFarlane was interviewed about Venom’s character in Spidey 3 and the man himself (althought he didn’t come out and say it directly) didn’t like the way they portrayed the character. Instead he stated that Venom was a villian that was designed to dwarf Spidey. In fact he was supposed to be bigger than a bodybuilder hence the haunched back, fangs and monster size relative to Spidey. The character is supposed to be the pinnacle of strength and terror. Venom is supposed to make even modern bodybuilders look like a pile of puke. In Spiderman 3 they made him the same size as Spiderman? What was the distinction that separated the villan from the main character? Teeth? A black costume (oh wait Spidey had one of those too)? It wasn’t the Venom that McFarlane established in the late 80’s.
As for a Venom movie? I just think that barring CGI the character can never be portrayed in film the way print media has established his character.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I say do it. Go ahead, make the Venom movie & cast Topher Grace.
This would be the perfect “cocky bastard becomes an anti-hero” film and resurrect Harry Osborne so that Venom looks a bit more sympathetic. The Villain? Cletus Cassidy… have Eddie Brock fight the spread his symbiote has and being forced into thinking of somebody other than himself.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Iron Man’s too lame a character to be a major film!
Oh wait, we’re talking about some other character now.
Venom can certainly be made into a movie. Hardly worth throwing a fit over.
As for X-Men and Spider-Man movie rights…don’t expect them to expire. Fox and Sony would have to not make use of them for some number of years for them to revert to Marvel, and that’s clearly not going to happen any time soon.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Oops, that should’ve said “adult comic movie fan” in my earlier post up there.
And to clarify, thinking something might be tricky to pull off doesn’t mean I think that they shouldn’t give it a shot, they absolutely should.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:23 pm
at least the written by jacob estes thing sounds interesting, in that “so unexpected it’s bound to be cool, like david gordon green directing pineapple express” sorta way.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Enough with the name-calling.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:36 pm
avery and NeoSamurai –
Knock it off.
JK
August 1st, 2008 at 12:20 am
This summer has shown the Spider-Man franchise to be the true crap that it is…. all 3… crappy effects, crappy acting and just general crap crappity crap crap….. and first Kirsten Dunst then Maggie Gyllenhal, how do these ugly chicks keep getting cast in these flicks?
August 1st, 2008 at 2:45 am
I don’t want to see a Venom movie at all. What’s there to tell? His entire story was already thrown in Spider-Man 3, plus he’s been killed off also. I think by far that last year’s Spider-Man 3 was the weakest of the three Spider-Man movies. It fell to the Batman sequels formula of the 1990s with ‘the two villains team-up against the hero’, which was just too much to take for one movie. There wasn’t enough time to tell a better, more polished story when you cram in too many characters. Plus, adding Captain Stacy and daughter Gwen…sheesh. Anyways, putting Sandman paired up with Venom just didn’t seem right. It seemed forced into the story. One villian, Sandman, would have been just fine only, but throwing in Venom was a mistake. Eddie Brock/Venom’s story was completely told in the movie, plus the rest of the story itself that needed to be told (Sandman, the Stacys, etc.). I never thought that the excellent Spider-Man film series would fall into the (former) Batman film series’ formula of two villains, and look what we got.
Director Sam Raimi was forced into adding Venom by CEO and the founder of Marvel Studios, Avi Arad (who was also the executive producer). Arad told Raimi that the die hard fans want to see Venom in the films sometime, citing the character’s popularity. Raimi wasn’t familiar with Venom, but did his research and saw the potential, and ended up co-writing the script with his brother, Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent. When the boss gets involved with an idea, maybe disaster strikes, at times? Raimi later stated in an interview a few months after Spider-Man 3 was out that he would not write again if there’s a Spider-Man 4 in the future, I think realising his creative limits, or at least the huge workload of doing double duty, direct & co-write (maybe in hindsight knowing personally that Spidey 3 wasn’t as good in terms of the script itself).
If a Spidey 4 happens, whether they go for a brand new cast of stars and if Raimi himself will be involved in anyway, just go back to the one villain only plot. That’s the most simple thing to do at least, have 4 get back to basics like how 1 and 2 were at least. I don’t see Spider-Man as a dead/aging franchise yet, and I hope Sony Pictures doesn’t think that way either.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:39 am
I think Spidey 3 could’ve handled 2 villains (Sandman and Hobgoblin/Harry Osborne). It could’ve given more scenes to the already strong portrayal of Sandman. It’s when 3 villains were introduced that the movie fell apart.
But I digress…You’re right about Venom’s story pretty much told in Spidey 3. The only way Venom might work on his own is if it’s more of a redo with a new Eddie Brock portrayal taking him away somewhat from his villain origins.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:37 am
Bringing Venom back isn’t a problem; these are comic book characters, after all. And there’s no reason why they couldn’t bulk Venom up in size some more either. That could easily be explained by Brock simply needing more time to get used to the symbiont and its abilities.
As somebody else mentioned, the problem isn’t whether Topher Grace can carry the role, it’s really whether Venom is worthy of a movie. And I find it hard to argue that he would be. Maybe if Sony hadn’t screwed up Spidey 3 by insisting that Venom be involved in the film so much…
Also, getting stupid errors when using Firefox. Tells me to enable JavaScript and cookies. And then immediately informs me that both are in fact enabled. And then the formatting for the blog is screwed up in IE. *sigh*
August 1st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
This is a great news !
In the comic-book, Eddie Brock is not like poor Spider-Man 3’s symbiote.
A french symbiote’s fan
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 am
“Move over Catwoman and Elektra”
BWHAHAHAHAHAHA! That killed me. Thanks!
August 24th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Look at it this way: if they DO make a Venom spin-off then they could probably just start over and do a complete reboot of the character like they did with The Hulk, and like the 2nd Hulk movie it could be a spin-off to the Spider-Man films but at the same time have no connection to them. I also agree to comments that I’ve seen before that they could easily replace Topher Grace since Venom is a symbiote, and maybe they could add Carnage to the mix to make it darker than what Sam Raimi would have done.