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‘Venom’?? Spinoff Revived By Sony, But Won’t Feature Spider-Man Or The MCU?

By Stephen Jordan
Published on: 12:27 PST, Mar 4, 2016

Venom is one of Spider-Man’s most popular villains, so naturally, Sony would love to get a solo Venom spinoff in the works. That was going to happen at one point, just before the infamous Sony hack, which ultimately lead to Sony making a deal with Marvel Studios to “share” the Spider-Man property. Fans assumed the Venom movie, as well as the Sinister Six film, were off the table. But Variety reports that Sony is indeed moving forward on a Venom spinoff — without Spider-Man.

A Venom movie without Spider-Man won’t make a whole lot of sense to comic-book fans, and probably plenty of general audiences. But sadly, it looks as if this upcoming Venom solo-film will have nothing to do with the Sony-Marvel Studios shared universe. In other words, Venom won’t be battling against Spider-Man, or any of the heroes within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is certainly a bummer.

'Venom'?? Spinoff Revived By Sony, But Won't Feature Spider-Man?
[Photo via Marvel Comics]
Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach will be producing the project. Arad is quite familiar with the property, having served as a producer on Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy. It was in that third film that Venom, played by Topher Grace, made his cinematic debut. The movie itself is not fondly remembered, and neither is Sony’s portrayal of Venom in that film. Apparently, Sony has brought on Dante Harper to write the script, and they intend for this Venom project to become a separate franchise, apart from the Spider-Man franchise. Which, again, sounds incredibly odd.

Venom would not exist if it weren’t for Spider-Man — that’s who he ultimately got his powers from. In the comics, an alien symbiote eventually attached itself to Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Spidey’s suit then became black for a number of issues, as the symbiote copied not only all of his abilities, but his thoughts as well.

'Venom'?? Spinoff Revived By Sony, But Won't Feature Spider-Man?
[Photo via Marvel Comics]
The symbiote was feeding Peter too much hate. In an attempt to get rid of it, Spider-Man used the bells housed in Our Ladies of Saints church to rip the symbiote off of his body. The alien suit crawled away and secretly found and bonded to Eddie Brock, who became Venom. Retaining all of Spider-Man’s abilities, as well as his thoughts — the symbiote allowed Eddie to figure out Spider-Man’s true identity.

Not to mention, Venom is the perfect doppelganger to Spider-Man being able to virtually do anything the web-crawler can do. It looks as if Sony might just introduce this character in a matter-of-fact approach, without explaining the character’s origin and how he is able to do the things he can do. They would have no choice, if they are really intent on excluding Spider-Man.

Besides Eddie Brock, the Venom symbiote has been attached to other hosts in the comics. It’s unlikely that they’ll go with Eddie Brock wearing the suit, at this point it’s a safe bet to assume that Flash Thompson will be Venom in this spinoff. Flash is a classic bully of Peter Parker in the comics and also a classmate. In the comics during 2010, Flash was hired by the government to become a special agent, while wearing the Venom symbiote.

Thompson is only allowed to wear the Venom suit for no longer than 48 hours, otherwise, Flash could become permanently bonded with the alien symbiote. What’s more, if Flash/Venom were to ever get out of control and become too violent or destructive, the government has a “kill switch” set in place just in case, which would ultimately take him out. Along with the alien symbiote suit, Flash Thompson is equipped with a special gun that is designed to literally morph into any type of gun Flash thinks of.

From that description, it’s safe to assume this may be the direction Sony decides to go in, but the studio has yet to release an official statement regarding the project.

[Photo via Marvel Comics]

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