Before The Amazing Spider-Man 2, uh, sucked, Sony had planned to use the movie to launch a whole cinematic universe of Spider-Man movies. In addition to a third Amazing Spidey, there was going to be a Sinister Six movie starring some of the Wall-Crawler’s most notorious villains, and a movie for Venom, his black-suited adversary who previously appeared in Spider-Man 3, where he was played by Topher Grace. At various points, Gary Ross and Josh Trank were in position to direct the film from a script by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

The general flopitude of Amazing Spider-Man 2 sent Sony back to the drawing board; now we’ll never even find out just what was going on with Peter Parker’s parents and that stupid hidden subway car, much less see a Sinister Six movie. Instead Sony has strengthened its ties with Marvel and its mighty movie machine to produce an all-new Spider-Man, directed by Jon Watts and starring Tom Holland as your Friendly Neighborhood Web-Slinger. But, according to The Hollywood Reporter, this new plan hasn’t completely squashed the possibility of a Venom movie.

THR reports that a Venom is still very much a part of Sony’s Spidey plans, and that the studio has just hired Dante Harper (writer of the upcoming American version of Sleepless Night) to write a new script for the project, which is “envisioned as a franchise apart and unrelated to the upcoming Spider-Man movie” starring Holland.

At this point, it’s unknown which version of Venom will appear in Harper’s script. It could be Eddie Brock, the big, burly, flat-topped nut who blames Spider-Man for all the problems in his life and teams up with an alien symbiote to destroy his foe (and later becomes a sort of anti-hero, protecting those he deems “innocent”). It could be Mac Gargan (aka classic Spider-Man villain Scorpion) who held on to the symbiote for a couple years. Or it could be Flash Thompson, Spider-Man’s former-bully-turned-buddy-turned-Iraq-War-veteran, who is given the Venom symbiote by the government and uses it to become a secret agent (and later a space bound superhero; he’s currently starring in the comics version of Guardians of the Galaxy). All that’s known at this point is this: He will 100% not be played by Topher Grace.

 

 

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