Having traded Spider-Man to Marvel for five Bazooka Joe comics and and a pack of gum, Sony is now all-in on fast-tracking their solo Venom project. Despite a solo Venom movie naturally needing a ton of VFX, and with no director or actors signed on, Sony has still set the release date of Venom as October 5, 2018.
It’s a bold move, especially considering most of the project is still in its idea stage. We do know that Dante Harper (Alien: Covenant) has written the script and that the film will be produced by Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, who were Sony’s longtime producers of their three Spider-Man films.
A solo Venom film has been a long time coming. Before Sony released The Amazing Spider-Man 2, they were attempting to mimic the MCU with their own web of interconnected films under one banner.
A third Spider-Man instalment was planned, before a Suicide Squad-like villain-centric movie titled Sinister Six, with a Venom spinoff intended to spawn from there. Following The Amazing Spider-Man 2‘s poor reviews and box office performance, the plan was scrapped.
More ideas were tossed around before Sony were able to reach a deal with Marvel that brought Spidey officially into the MCU for an appearance in Captain America: Civil War before Spider-Man: Homecoming arrives later this year.
Thus, a solo Venom film (and potential franchise) will likely be totally separate from the Spider-Man universe and the MCU, which is a pretty liberating idea. That should allow whoever is at the helm of Venom to take the film and the character in any direction they see fit, though it’ll be interesting to see whether Sony likes the idea of building their own interconnected universe sans-Spider-Man around Venom.
Fans who’ve been clamouring for a great cinematic representation of Venom will be holding their breath and crossing their fingers that this is finally the film they’ve been dreaming of. The depiction of Venom in Spider-Man 3 set the bar pretty low, so it can only get better from there, right?
#Peace.Love.Venom
