The plans concerning the Spider-man franchise have been famously complex due to studio rights, but with those resolved… the bad-guy ‘Venom’ may be getting another chance…
A few years ago there were major plans for Spider-man movies and a series of spin-offs possibly featuring an array of various villains from the comics. The deal SONY made with Marvel changed a lot of plans with Peter Parker and his alter-ego essentially being shared between the studios so he could appear alongside the Avengers (in Captain America: Civil War) and in his own revived franchise.
One of those aborted plans involved ‘Venom‘ the character created as a villain in Marvel Comics‘ first real ‘summer event’ title, the original Secret Wars epic. In that story, Spider-man is whisked to another planet with other Marvel heroes and ultimately changes from his damaged traditional red and blue costume to an all-black outfit, one that responds to his thoughts. It turns out later that the ‘costume’ is actually a skin-tight symbiote that is using Peter’s body for its own purposes and is finally defeated when Parker discovers its evil intentions. The character proved immensely popular and over the years and eventually evolved from all-out baddie to anti-hero and then joined with Peter’s school tormentor-turned-friend Flash Thompson who had been crippled in an accident – turning it into a mutually-beneficial partnership.
The character made an appearance in Spider-man 3 where the creature was brought to Earth on a meteor and took over the form of Peter’s rival reporter, Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace. However the film got poor reviews and was largely seen as packing too many characters into one film. Director Sam Raimi’s plans for the franchise were abandoned thereafter with he and Tobey Maguire leaving the project and before a temporary reboot with Andrew Garfield in the Spidey role was attempted.
It now appears from reports in the Hollywood Reporter that a separate Venom project could be back on the production slate, likely reinventing the character for a new audience. It isn’t known which incarnation of Venom is being discussed for this new project but Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach (who have been involved with Spider-man for some time) are on board as producers with an initial screenplay being penned by Edge of Tomorrow writer Dante Harper. It is early days but there is reportedly a desire to consider Venom as a franchise in its own right – perhaps indicating some ‘heroic’ aspect to proceedings.
