Jon M. Chu’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation is now playing in theaters.  The sequel’s story finds the Joes disbanded and outnumbered as they must square off against not only the Cobras, but also threats within their own government.  G.I. Joe: Retaliation stars Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum,  D.J. Cotrona, Elodie Yung, Ray Park, Byung-hun Lee, Ray Stevenson, Walton Goggins, RZA and Adrianne Palicki.  For more on the film, here’s clips, images, on set interviews, and all our previous coverage.

Last weekend, I sat down with screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick for an extended interview.  Over the past few days we’ve posted what they said about their Zombieland pilot, the Deadpool movie, and their take on Venom.  However, that was just the tip of the iceberg because during the interview we also talked about making G.I. Joe, the nine-minute dialogue-free action sequence featuring Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, the 3D post conversion, changes from the original G.I. Joe, landing the job, and other future projects like an HBO series, a sci-fi tent-pole for Sony, Universal’s Cowboy Ninja Vikings, and Bad Robot’s Micronauts.  Hit the jump to watch.

One of the most popular and widely known characters from the Spider-Man universe is undoubtedly Venom.  When Sam Raimi’s feature film adaptation of Spider-Man hit theaters in 2002 and become a massive success, fans started speculating about when/if we would see the Venom character pop up in a subsequent sequel.  Despite Raimi’s reluctance to use the character, Venom eventually made an appearance in Spider-Man 3, after which Sony started working on a spinoff film for the villain.  Though the pic has yet to actually come to fruition, a few scripts for a Venom movie have been written, including a couple drafts by Zombieland scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Steve recently spoke with Reese and Wernick in anticipation of the release of the sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which they wrote, and the duo talked about their proposed Venom film.  The two talked briefly about their take on the character and how it’s unlikely that their iteration of the script will get made, also teasing a pretty great sequence from their proposed Venom movie.  Hit the jump to read on.

Venom fanboys have had to carry around the disappointment of seeing their favorite character shoved into the awful Spider-Man 3.  However, producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach have never given up the ghost of the slobbering Spidey foe.  As recently as this past March, we reported that Chronicle director Josh Trank was in talks to helm a new movie featuring the villain/anti-hero.  However, how do you have Venom without Spider-Man and how do you have a Venom movie if the character isn’t in The Amazing Spider-Man?

Hit the jump for how Venom might fit into the new comic-book world The Amazing Spider-Man is spinning.

Banking on the success of the found-footage superhero film, Chronicle, word has it that Sony is looking to the film’s director, Josh Trank, to helm its Spider-Man spin-off, Venom. With the studio’s The Amazing Spider-Man reboot swinging into theaters on July 3rd, perhaps there’s room for the psychotic symbiotic to be featured as a main antagonist in an upcoming film, rather than the sidenote he became in 2007′s Spider-Man 3, played by Topher Grace. Venom, an alien symbiotic life form that bonds with its host for survival, has been a mainstay in the world of Marvel nemeses and could further open up the Spider-Man storyline if the creative team chose to go in that direction. Being a big fan of Trank’s work on Chronicle, I’d be very interested to see what he could do with a big budget superhero flick. Hit the jump for more on Venom.

Last week we reported that writer-director Gary Ross (“Pleasantville”, “Seabiscuit”) was in talks with Columbia to direct their “Spider-Man” spinoff movie, “Venom” about the Spider-Man villain who has Spider-Man’s powers but he’s got claws and is muscular and slobbers a lot.  I didn’t see much of a need for a Venom movie so I’m delighted to learn that Ross is pushing “Venom” aside to take on Donald Hamilton’s “Matt Helm” series about a swinging, pulpy super-spy.  Hit the jump for more details.

We don’t need a Venom movie.  Underneath his proto-”Spawn” design, he’s a simple and boring character.  Eddie Brock/Venom is the polar opposite Peter Parker/Spider-Man and the main goal of both is to kill Spider-Man, a goal which should be no problem to accomplish in a movie that doesn’t have Spider-Man.  But fanboys love the drooling doofus so Columbia has been hard at work on a spinoff. Last we heard, “Zombieland” writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese were on the project but that no longer seems to be the case as its now looks like “Seabiscuit” director and “Spider-Man 4″ screenwriter Gary Ross may write and direct the project.  Hit the jump for more details as well as bafflement as to how you make a “Venom” movie that isn’t just a two-minute tech demo.

As the creators of the short lived “Joe Schmo Show”, you’d never think of these two as the writers of a zombie movie. But sometimes when you want to shake up a genre, getting two outsiders is exactly what you need for success. And that’s what I think is going to happen later this year when Columbia Pictures releases “Zombieland” on October 9^th.

The film is written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and after the jump is a lot more info on the film, along with a very extensive interview with the two screenwriters. They talk about where the idea came from, what changes were made along the way, what are the rules in their zombie universe, how they got into writing, and they talk about the other projects they’re working on. It’s a great interview so take a look: