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.
The LA Times is reporting that Trank is in negotiations with the studio to direct a Venom spin-off from Sony and Columbia Pictures’ Spider-Man franchise. The project has been in the works for a while and has been associated with such names as Zombieland’s Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, director Gary Ross (The Hunger Games) who was in talks with the studio previously before turning it down and Jacob Estes (The Details) who turned in a script portraying Venom as more of an antihero and less as a villain. While it appears that the studio is not looking to redeem the villainous character in any way (they’re seeking a new writer), they’re also not looking to bring back Topher Grace to reprise his role. For that, at least, fans can be thankful.
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how the hell are you going to make a Venom movie without Spider-man? More importantly how the hell are you going to make a movie centered around a villain who used to scare the crap outta me as a little kid? I mean i don’t know the comics verse like others do and am sure their where comics that pitted venom against others but if they don’t want an anti-hero than how are they going to make a big budget super hero film based off of someone villainous?
I think I was more excited when he was being linked to the FF reboot.
Man, there needs to be a way that Sony returns the Spidey franchise to Marvel. Am sure Marvel can pony up the cash…right? Or is there some other legal route?
Marvel hasn’t been independent for a long time,it’s wholly owned by Disney.And they are the biggest media conglomerate in the world…so do the math.
JAGUAR ! JAGUAR ! JAGUARRRR !
The biggest problem is that they didn’t even set him up for a spin off and anyone who saw the movie that knew Venom was not happy about that portrayal and those who didn’t know the character before the movie didn’t care. They need 3 whole movies in order to do this right. The first to reintroduce Venom and make him THE ONLY VILLAIN! The second would be to introduce Carnage and have Spidey and Venom work together to stop him in what should be an R rated movie and then they could do a spin off.
I only read the Venom comics in his first year or two, but it seemed at the time that Venom was something of an anti-hero, in that he had his own code of ethics and saw himself more or less as a good guy, even if society did not.
He was interested in “protecting the innocents” and in one iteration lived with and protected the homeless population in San Francisco. The reason he was a villain was because he’s mete out death as punishment where he saw fit. And that he considered himself an “innocent” that Spider-man betrayed and abused, therefore was an enemy of Spider-man, and therefore was a villain because Spider-man was a hero.
He was, as I knew him, a lot more like The Punisher, or Judge Dredd, an anti-hero/justice out of control figure. I would have liked to have seen Estes’ script.