Despite predominantly negative reviews, Venom became a box office smash back in October, reeling in an impressive $851 million worldwide and experiencing especially good numbers in China, a country that Hollywood has been trying to crack for decades. Thus it’s no surprise that a sequel is happening, but one of the film’s co-writers will not be returning for it.
Despite the film just being in early development right now, writer Jeff Pinker has already confirmed that he will not be on board for the sequel: “I can’t say anything other than that it is happening. I am not [working on it]”. However, he did go on to reveal that the much-discussed possibility of Marvel lending Sony the rights to Spider-Man somewhere down the line is a possibility:
“Without revealing anything that I’m not allowed to reveal, it is not impossible that in a future/upcoming Venom movie, Spider-Man will play a significant role […] I think it’s fair to say that everyone involved would be very excited by a Spider-Man/Venom movie”.
Although that is a tantalising possibility, the rights to the character are currently pretty confusing and will probably be delved into further down the line. For right now, Sony is expected to take a different direction with the Venom sequel. The idea is reportedly to take it less seriously and put a larger focus on the dark comedy, romantic, and body horror elements.
Most agreed that the film was far too self-serious in its approach and felt more like a superhero film from 2008 than 2018. But what was at least interesting was Tom Hardy‘s strange relationship with the talking symbiote occupying his body, and it seems Sony has taken that feedback on board and will look to make that more of a focus in the sequel.
The studio has already set aside an October 2020 release date for a sequel, and although they haven’t explicitly stated, that is widely assumed to be where the Venom sequel will debut.
Pinker no longer being on board and a desire to change up the tone seems to indicate that Sony will be hiring a fresh batch of writers to try and repeat the box office numbers, only this time they’re hoping to match those with an equally strong critical and audience response.
#Peace.Love.Venom
