Venom Was Originally Going To Be A Low-Budget Body Horror (& What Changed)

While Sony got its Venom franchise started in 2018, the Spider-Man villain’s film was originally envisioned as a dark horror movie. Even though Venom got released in 2018, Sony had wanted to make a film centered on Eddie Brock since  Spider-Man 3. After Sam Raimi’s trilogy ended, Sony rebooted the web-slinger with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man series, which got scrapped after two installments. Even back then, Sony was trying to get a Venom spinoff done, but with no success.

After years of Venom being stuck in development hell, Sony finally saw the film become a reality, with Tom Hardy starring as the titular character. As the Marvel film was a commercial success, Sony didn’t take long to get a sequel greenlit, with Venom: Let There Be Carnage coming later this year. But while Sony did manage to get their Venom spinoff produced after years of trying, the movie was originally going to be something completely different. For starters, Sony was eying to make Venom with a low-budget rather than the reported $100-115 million budget it ended up having. In tone, Venom was meant to lean heavily on the body horror genre, something that has not been used in many comic book films as of yet.

Given the nature of the Symbiote as a concept, it would have potentially resulted in Venom becoming one of the most intense comic book films to date. John Carpenter and David Cronenberg’s body horror work was also something that Venom was meant to draw inspiration from on a bigger scale. Even though the film’s tone did have some of those elements, they massively scaled it back. The plan was also to have Venom kick off Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters by being R-rated – only for it to be changed and made less adult so as to afford it a PG-13 rating, instead. The changes ultimately happened after Sony saw the financial result of Spider-Man: Homecoming.

While the SPUMC and MCU’s connections are still very unclear, it is obvious Sony has not wanted to rule out the idea of seeing Spider-Man and Venom share the screen at some point. Had Sony proceeded with making Venom and the rest of their Marvel-related universe R-rated, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man would never fit in with those films due to the darker tones. The MCU’s Spider-Man was established in a PG-13-rated franchise, which wouldn’t have clashed well with Sony’s original Venom film, given how gritty it was meant to be at first. While the idea of a crossover would likely be appealing to many on paper, the execution would most definitely have been a mixed bag.

Even though Sony could have just introduced a new Spider-Man for the SPUMC, it is also understandable that Holland’s Spider-Man is their priority if they were ever to have Peter show up in Venom or the other films. But it also makes sense for those who maybe didn’t connect with Venom’s final product, which had a big buddy/cop tone between Eddie and the Symbiote. While Venom certainly had a sense of the body horror theme, one can only imagine how much further they could have taken it if Sony had stuck to the R-rated concept for their new universe.

NEXT: Venom 2 Trailer References Raimi’s Spider-Man Movies (Are They Connected?)

About The Author

Andy Behbakht
(1040 Articles Published)

Andy is a senior writer at Screen Rant as he has covered the world of entertainment journalism since 2010, including superhero/comic book media. In addition to his work as a reporter, Andy co-hosts The Flash Podcast while running and producing the entire DC TV Podcasts network. He is also the founder/editor-in-chief of The Marvel Report since Fall 2015. Andy has previously written for sites such as FanSided, KSiteTV, TV Fanatic, It’s Just Movies, Heroic Hollywood, TV Overmind, and more.

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