Fancast: The Big Picture

So there's a rumor that Marvel Studios is going to try to make a Venom movie. You know, the big bag of goo that Topher Grace became at the end of Spider-Man 3. At least that's what IESB is saying.

IESB is also heaping a lot more praise onto the character of Venom and a lot more derision onto Spider-Man 3 than either of them deserve. Lots of comic nerds love Venom, and they tend to overlook the fact that the character in the comics is essentially an Alien riff, all drooling ridiculous tongue and a head full of teeth threatening to eat your brain. It was an unfortunate symptom of a lot of the early-1990s awfulness that pervaded the medium at the time. His origin is ridiculously convoluted, and I think Sam Raimi did the best he could with it. Seriously, there were about thirty characters with absurd prehensile tongues and fang-filled mouths like this. Thankfully, they left the tongue out of the movie.

Raimi likely had to cave from the pressure Avi Arad was putting on him to shoehorn Venom into Spider-Man 3, when the original villains were going to be the Sandman and the Vulture (a character Ben Kingsley was in talks to play at one time, which makes me all the angrier that we got Venom instead). Venom in his own movie would hopefully free up Raimi to get back to the business of making classic Spider-Man movies (although I really hope he amps up Spidey's dialog at some point, because the character is supposed to be a really funny guy). My kingdom for Mysterio, the crazy fish-bowl-headed hallucinogenic criminal.

No word on whether Topher Grace would return for the role. I really thought his prying to God to kill Peter Parker was a great broken moment. But the gooey black symbiote can really be on just about anybody, so there's no limit to who they can bring in for this movie. Maybe even Tim Conway.