Months before the found-footage superhero film Chronicle even hit theaters, rumor had it that the movie's newbie director Josh Trank was first in line to direct Fox's reboot of The Fantastic Four-- a scrappy superhero up-and-comer moving up to the big leagues. But as it turns out, another comics-based project might be up first. The LA Times reports that Trank is now in negotiations with Sony to direct a movie about Venom, the Spider-Man villain who popped up in Spider-Man 3.
A Venom movie has been rumored pretty much ever since 2007's Spider-Man 3, and at one point none other than The Hunger Games director Gary Ross was looking to handle the project. Trank is a much less high-profile director than Ross, of course, but with the mini-budget Chronicle having grossed $104 million worldwide and counting, he's no slouch either. The Times does't say when the film might go into production, but notes they're looking for a new writer and that Topher Grace, who played Venom in Spider-Man 3, won't be reprising the role. They're pretty much starting over from scratch, and bringing in a young director like Trank seems like a pretty solid step in that direction.
It seems pretty likely we won't hear a lot more about the Venom movie until after the July opening of The Amazing Spider-Man, for which Sony hired another relatively untested director, Marc Webb, to bring a useful spin to the character. If this summer's version of Spider-Man pans out, we can probably expect Venom to have his turn very, very soon after-- meaning The Fantastic Four might have to wait.
