Venom 2 producer Matt Tolmach says the movie could be R-rated thanks to the success of Joker. Released in 2018, Venom proved to be a surprisingly massive success at the box office with a gross of $856 million worldwide. Starring Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom, the film put a dark and twisted spin on the supervillain origin story – though the movie did stop short of going full-on R-rated in its depiction of the Spider-Man bad guy.
Some fans indeed expressed disappointment that Venom did not go all the way into R-rated territory, especially given the prior success of R-rated comic book films Deadpool and Logan – movies that seemingly destroyed old conventional wisdom about comic book movies needing to stay in the PG and PG-13 area. There are still hopes that the Venom sequel, which brings back Hardy as Brock and will introduce Woody Harrelson as Carnage, could push things farther content-wise and edge all the way into R territory. However, Venom 2 producer Avi Arad recently shot down the idea of the sequel going R-rated, saying the second movie will carry a PG-13 rating like the first.
However, in what must be taken as a good sign for Venom fans hoping for a more comics-accurate take on the character in Venom 2, producer Tolmach indicated that an R-rating is actually still on the table for the comic book sequel – and Joker is the reason why. Speaking to CinemaBlend, Tolmach said:
I mean, I think you always have to think about [it], now that that works. Having said that, our movie worked really well. Our franchise exists as it is, and I don't think anybody is looking to just say, ‘Hey, they [did it]!’ We have a place in the world. So it isn't like suddenly everybody's considering what to do with the rating. … I think what Joker does is it tells you that you can succeed.
Much like Venom, Joker went dark in telling its own comic book villain origin story, but in the case of Todd Phillips’ film things went still darker and even crossed over into that formerly dreaded R-rated territory. Much to the surprise of many, Joker soared to a take of over $1 billion worldwide, further demonstrating that an R-rating is no longer the box office obstacle it once was.
After Joker’s massive success, it makes all the sense in the world for Sony to explore going R-rated with Venom 2. Of course, Sony also holds out hope of one day executing a Spider-Man/Venom crossover film, which likely means keeping Venom sequels out of R-rated territory to avoid conflict with Disney’s firmly PG-13 take on Spider-Man (the two companies still share the character, thanks at least in part to Tom Holland's drunken pleading). It remains to be seen how Sony decides to play it, but there’s no doubt hardcore Venom fans are in favor of following the Joker example and allowing the character to go fully dark and twisted a la the comic books.
Source: CinemaBlend