The History of Unmade Venom Movies

David S. Goyer's Venom

Years before Sam Raimi directed Sony's Spider-Man (2002), New Line Cinema actually had the rights to the character. While not much is known about that unmade film, we do know that David S. Goyer — the screenwriter behind the Blade trilogy (also directed 2004's Blade: Trinity), Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy and Zack Snyder's Man of Steel — was hired to pen the script, and it would've featured Venom as an anti-hero and Carnage as the antagonist.

Gary Ross's Venom

In July 2007, nearly 20 years after Venom first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988) and three months after he made his cinematic debut (portrayed by Topher Grace) in Spider-Man 3, producer Avi Arad revealed that Sony was developing a Venom spin-off. Jacob Estes penned the first draft, but by September 2008, he was replaced with Zombieland and Deadpool screenwriters, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. Then, in October 2009, Gary Ross — the writer and director of Seabiscuit (2003) and The Hunger Games (2012) — was hired to direct and rewrite the script.

Josh Trank's Venom

In March 2012, a month after Chronicle was released in North America, Sony entered into negotiations with Josh Trank to direct Venom. And while, yes, he never officially came on board the project, he was reportedly close to saying yes. What stopped him? Trank was a hot commodity at that time, so 20th Century Fox also went after Trank hard, offering him Fantastic Four. How'd that work out again?

Venom in The Amazing Spider-Man Universe

In December 2013, six months before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was released, Sony officially announced plans to expand the franchise with Venom and Sinister Six movies. As for the former, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Ed Solomon were announced as the screenwriters and Kurtzman (The Mummy) would've directed it. That would've marked his directorial debut.

Before it was officially canned, Kurtzman talked about how he viewed the character and his approach to the spin-off. "Venom is sort of the flipside," he explained to MTV in September 2014. "There are certain lines that Spider-Man won't cross, because he's Peter Parker, and Peter Parker will only do certain things. And Venom is an entirely different character." Kurtzman added, "Venom in a weird way is the representation of every line that will get crossed, so he's a much darker character. I wouldn't even really say more complicated, because I think they are both very complicated characters. I think the attraction for me to Venom is that you can do things that you can't do with Spider-Man."

Producer Avi Arad wanted the film to delve into the character's moral ambiguity. "Venom hated only one guy – Spider-Man," he told SFX (March 2014). "He wasn't innately bad, he was a shortcut guy, not really into fighting hard for achievement. That's the Venom story. Can he also be a good guy? As you know, Venom was also called 'lethal defender of the innocent'. We had a great history with him, especially caring for the homeless, which is a very sensitive issue and something that many of us are very concerned with. Our villains all represent a different side of the misunderstood, and some of them unfortunately turned to the dark side. Venom happened to be a phenomenal character. With Eddie Brock, or if you do Flash Thompson, it doesn't matter who is going to be inside the suit – what's important is that a man like him is going to realize there comes a time when you wake up in the morning and say 'How did I get here? There must be a better way.'"