When Sony Pictures made that deal with Marvel Studios, both Sinister Six and Venom were shelved. Now, the latter is back on with Edge of Tomorrow’s Dante Harper attached to write the screenplay. With Alex Kurtzman hard at work on The Mummy reboot, he’s seemingly no longer involved, and all of this points to good things for this Spider-Man spinoff, right?
Wrong. You see, Sony are developing the movie independently of Marvel Studios, meaning that this version of Venom will not be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s being produced by Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, the duo who are widely considered responsible for destroying the Spider-Man franchise due to their interference.
It was Arad who forced Sam Raimi to include Venom in Spider-Man 3, and both he and Tolmach made many of the decisions which led to The Amazing Spider-Man movies being such dismal failures. They’ve been kept far away from that hero with Marvel Studios now taking control, but the prospect of them getting their hands on Venom is obviously worrying.
It’s not clear which version of Venom is being used for this spinoff, but it’s thought that this will be the first instalment of what Sony hopes is going to be a new franchise for them…
