Though Venom was set up as a pretty promising villain in Spider-Man 3, so many other things went wrong after that movie that the entire franchise underwent a reboot, leaving hopes for a Venom movie languishing somewhere at Sony. But with The Amazing Spider-Man coming in just a few weeks, there's new hope for Venom as well, with Chronicle's Josh Trank up to direct it and, of course, The Avengers getting every studio more interested in superheroes than ever before.
Interviews for The Amazing Spider-Man took place over the weekend in New York, and when Hollywood.com caught up with the film's producers Avi Arad and Matthew Tolmach, they talked a little about how Venom, which they call their next project, will fit into the world established by The Amazing Spider-Man. Namely, they're basically the same world: "Look for the worlds to make sense with one another," Tolmach promised. And Arad got a little further into the kind of big plans they have for Venom, a.k.a. Eddie Brock:
"It's an Eddie Brock story. We want to be as close to the comics as possible. Especially in Eddie Brock's story. But again, pseudo-sceince is becoming science. All these tidbits about webs, artificial webs, is a huge industry now. Spiderwebs have unique qualities that will be huge for communications, fibers, and so forth. So we have taken the approach that we want to make the huge amazing movie about Eddie."
What's still unclear, though, is how the success of the new Spider-Man might affect Venom. Obviously every superhero movie from here on out is hoping for Avengers-level business, but right now Spider-Man doesn't seem to have that kind of interest, which might make it hard to start building a big franchise. Then again, we've got several weeks to go before the movie comes out, and July 4 weekend is such a big time for moviegoing that a ton of people will wind up seeing it no matter what. But when The Amazing Spider-Man opens on July 3, you can start looking for the story threads that will eventually lead us to Eddie Brock.
