So far we know that the Venom movie may be titled Venom Carnage and it may arrive in theaters in 2017, but not much more beyond that.  However, while on the red carpet at the Paley Center For Media’s premiere of CBS’s Scorpion, writer-director Alex Kurtzman threw a little something else into the mix: Venom will be a particularly dark character.

Sounds familiar, right?  Evan did a Venom breakdown  back when we first found out the movie was in the works and in it, he emphasized that a key to making a Venom movie work is to make the character scary and keep him scary.  Perhaps that’s what Kurtzman is teasing here.  Hit the jump to find out exactly what he said.

While talking to MTV on that red carpet, Kurtzman discussed what appealed to him about the character:

“Well, Venom is sort of the flip side in that there are certain lines that Spider-Man won’t cross because he’s Peter Parker and Peter Parker will only do certain things and Venom is an entirely different character.”

With that being a major draw for Kurtzman, it should come as no surprise that he plans on taking advantage of the opportunity to cross those lines:

“Venom, in a weird way, is the representation of every line that will get crossed.  He’s a much darker character.  I wouldn’t even really say more complicated because I think they’re both very complicated characters, but I think the attraction for me to Venom is the idea that you can do things that you can’t do with Spider-Man.”

Darker or not, that last little bit is the clincher.  The whole point of making sequels and spinoffs is to get the opportunity to do something that you didn’t get to do in previous films.  Sure, Venom popped up in Spider-Man 3, but making a villain the protagonist of a film is an entirely different thing.  It’s hard to imagine Kurtzman and his team getting the OK to make a superhero movie with a truly terrifying title character, but if they do, it could give the Spider-Man film franchise the jolt it needs.

$202.9 million at the domestic box office is a nice chunk of cash, but it’s likely that Sony was hoping The Amazing Spider-Man 2 would earn some more and get a better critical response as well.  With the release date shifts and the lack of clarity on projects like Venom, the Spider-Man film franchise is getting hit with some negative vibes, but Kurtzman is confident that Peter Parker will prevail:

“Spider-Man has always occupied its own wonderful, unique space and the stories have evolved.  You know, Spider-Man actually has the benefit of having had so many more movies than even some of the movies that have 2s and 3s in front of them now from Marvel and so I think as long as it keeps staying true to character and true to who Peter is, and putting him in interesting and complicated situations, it’ll survive because it’s so beloved.  Everybody loves Spider-Man.”

Click here to check out more of our Venom coverage or you can use the links below:

venom-carnage-slice

Venom Character Details