Having heard a little yesterday from Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick about their as-yet-unfilmed Deadpool screenplay, the Zombieland and G.I. Joe: Retaliation scribes have now spoken about another comic book adaptation which is yet to see the light of day by offering up some details on a script they wrote for Sony’s long-in-development Spider-Man spin-off Venom.
“We did [write a Venom script],” Wernick tells Collider. “A long time ago, and it likely will not become a movie in that form. Too many things have happened in between now and then and different people have been involved, and it’s just likely not to happen in the form that we wrote it, unfortunately.”
Rheese described their version of Venom as “a realistic, grounded, a little more dark take on the character” (which seems to be par for the course with comic book adaptations these days), with Wernick adding that “it was definitely kind of dark and soul search-y. We love it and we’re proud of it.”
Wernick explained that the duo pitched Sony their own original idea for the storyline, before teasing a sequence from the script: “Imagine a symbiote traveling across a city at some point in the movie, jumping from body to body as it goes, and each person that it inhabits ends up becoming really violent and striking someone else and then it jumps to the next person. There was a really cool sequence like that in there.”
Sony has quietly been developing a Venom feature since Sam Raimi first introduced the character to movie series in Spider-Man 3, with Jacob Aaron Estes (Mean Creek) and Gary Ross (Pleasantville) both contributing drafts, while Ross was also attached to direct before dropping out to helm last year’s The Hunger Games.
Chronicle director Josh Trank signed on as Ross’ replacement on Venom last year, although he’s currently committed to The Fantastic Four at 20th Century Fox. So, unless the rumours about the character popping up alongside Andrew Garfield’s wall-crawler in next year’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 prove true, it could be a while yet before we see the symbiote back on the big screen.
Originally published March 27, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
