Superhero Hype recently caught up with Rhett Resse and Paul Wernick, the two screenwriters who penned a first draft of the Venom spin-off for Sony Pictures. The resulting discussion yielded a few choice tidbits about how the screenwriters view Venom, and what Sony and Marvel may be envisioning for the project.
The big question I know is on Venom fans’ minds: will we be getting the crappy Spider-Man 3 Venom? Or will the spin-off finally get the character right?
I won’t jerk you around and keep you wondering: Neither Resse nor Wernick could talk about whether or not the Venom we get in the spin-off will be at all connected to the (hopefully dead) version of the character that appeared in Spider-Man 3. I know it’s a big point of contention for any REAL Venom fans who were likely just as disappointed in SM3’s half-assed treatment of the iconic villain as I was.
(I know that Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi was peeved about Marvel and Sony forcing Venom into the 3rd film. The only way Raimi would come back to direct Spider-Man 4 was if he was given back the total creative control he had in Spider-Man 1 & 2.)
From the sound of things so far, Resse and Wernick are fairly big fans of Venom, enough so that they took the proactive route, approaching Sony with a pitch for a Venom spin-off:
“Venom is something that we’re very fired up to be writing… We have turned in a draft and are waiting to hear back, so it’s early in the process. But it’s a thrill to be writing ‘Venom’ for obvious reasons.”
Of course, as with any Marvel property, there were a TON of sacred character and continuum guidelines (Wernick calls them “the 47 rules”) the screenwriters had to adhere to while writing the Venom script:
“Obviously, with a character like Venom there’s a ton of stuff to draw from… Then they had specific rules about the villain and the backstory and stuff like that, so there were certain things they wanted us… certain parameters they gave us. But largely we pitched them something and they liked it but they had changes, so we worked on the outline for a long time and then we wrote the script. So with Marvel and Sony and us it’s definitely very, very collaborative.”
On the one hand, I feel enthused that two guys who are fans of Venom are trying to do right by the character. On the other hand, I’m still pretty paranoid about Marvel and Sony mucking with Venom, after they did such a poor, poor, job with him in Spider-Man 3. The whole freaking movie should’ve been about the alien symbiote, “black Spider-Man” and the origin of Venom! Screw The Sandman and James Franco’s “amnesia!”
Topher Grace ruining playing Venom in Spider-Man 3.
I’m not going to get too heated, though. At this early stage, what’s the point? But I will remain wary, and with good reason: getting the same tongue lashing, psychotically mischievous Venom we all know and love from the comics to translate to the big-screen in a believable way will be a helluva job.
There’s also the hurdle of trying to make a successful movie franchise out of a less-than-heroic character. Examples like Mickey Rourke as Marv in Sin City suggest that it is possible for psychotic comic book anti-heroes to resonate with audiences. However, The Punisher hasn’t done too well at the box office in the last few years, and the success of Watchmen, a film that was all about comic book anti-heroes, is certainly debatable. This could be a steep uphill battle for old Venom (his co-creator Todd McFarlane certainly thinks it will be).
What do you think, does a Venom movie have potential to be a box office hit? Do you think that Resse and Wernick are the type of guys who can come up with the kind of proper script that Venom deserves?
Source: Superhero Hype
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