As a film about a murderous alien symbiote who bites the heads off criminals when he’s in the best of moods, Venom doesn’t sound like the most kid-friendly of comic book flicks, making it all the more disappointing when fans heard that Eddie Brock’s first standalone film is likely to be saddled with a PG-13 rating. But if you still want to hold out hope that the upcoming Sony feature will join the likes of Logan and Deadpool in the elite club of R-rated superhero movies, it’s worth noting that no MPAA classification been confirmed yet, with director Ruben Fleischer suggesting that things could still go either way at this point.
Speaking to Total Film, the Zombieland helmsman explain how they packed enough grisly moment into Venom to place the movie somewhere near the dividing line between PG-13 and R.
“We’re curious to see where it’ll land.
But we pushed the envelope as far as we possibly could in terms of just making it the most true to the comics version of the film that we could. He’s a character that goes around biting people’s heads off and eating brains. So we tried to respect that as much as we could.”
Star Tom Hardy was similarly hesitant to say what age rating the film would get, but also alluded to the likelihood that a PG-13 movie would stand a better chance at the box office.
“You want to reach as big an audience as possible with one of these movies, because they’re good fun. My son steered me onto Venom. There would be things I would probably cover his eyes for. It depends how sensitive a nine-year-old’s parents are. It’s not my place to say. I don’t really know what [rating] they’re going to give it. But, it can pivot to either/or, if that makes sense. The IP lends itself to gore, and it also lends itself to a black comedy action thriller, as well.”
As much as Fleisher likes to play up the film’s gore credentials, it seems more likely than not that the studio will be keen to kick off their clunkily titled Sony Universe of Marvel Characters with something that the kids will be able to see. That puts Venom in the pretty tough position of having to please fans the often gruesome comics while keeping things relatively clean for younger viewers. And we’ll get to see if Fleischer and the team can pull off this tricky balance when the film comes out on October 5th.