Venom Will Borrow From John Carpenter, Jekyll & Hyde

With the massive success of the rebooted Spider-Man film franchise with Spider-Man: Homecoming which sits at number six on the year's top grossing films with a $220 million at the domestic box office, Sony is looking to expand it's comic book film catalogue.

Sony Entertainment and it's film studio Columbia Pictures isn't looking to build a singular interconnected universe like DC or Marvel have done. In an interview with Variety Columbia Pictures president Stanford Panitch explains that each film outside of the Spider-Man franchise will have it's own look and feel. Some will be large budget, some smaller, some will be horror spin-offs and films like Silver & Black (a Silver Sable and Black Cat film) will be "buddy films."

Venom, which has already cast The Dark Knight Rises Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock the man that bonds with the alien symbiote will be a horror film and not just any horror film - but one inspired by, according to Panitch: "the work of John Carpenter or David Cronenberg while promising "more pop and fun." Variety didn't elaborate if the Carpenter/Cronenberg reference meant that it would be a lower budget film or if he was focusing on just the style of films like The Thing and The Fly with their more grotesque monsters.

While Tom Hardy is currently the only actor cast for Venom - the writing staff and director have been named. Ruben Fleischer is directing the expected October 2018 release and says that the film will be an origin story and keep with the Jekyll and Hyde relationship of the original Marvel comics. Saying in Variety, "They become almost a third being, which is what Venom is," Fleischer says. "There's a famous quote: 'You're Eddie Brock. I'm the symbiote. Together we are Venom.'"

Fleischer is best known for his 2009 film Zombieland, and will be directing a Lionsgate adaptation of the BBC series Jekyll, with Captain America's Chris Evans. The film will hopefully do better than Universal's borrish The Mummy, which introduced Russell Crowe as a take on the classic Dr. Jekyll and My. Hyde character.

Venom will be written The Amazing Spider-Man 2's Jeff Pinkner and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle's Scott Rosenberg.