This October’s Venom marks the first time the symbiotic villain has been portrayed on the big screen in 11 years, ever since he made his live-action debut in 2007’s Spider-Man 3. You might remember the intense excitement that surrounded that movie beforehand, given the quality of the previous two films, but we were left burned by the lackluster portrayal of one of the most beloved characters in the Spidey mythology once it came out.
While speaking with ScreenRant to promote Venom, longtime Spider-Man franchise producer Avi Arad took full responsibility for the way Venom was treated in Sam Raimi’s threequel, explaining that he regrets pressing for the director to include him in the movie when he wasn’t interested in tackling the character.
“I think we learned that Venom is not a sideshow. In all fairness, I’ll take the guilt because of what Sam Raimi used to say in all of these interviews feeling guilty that I forced him into it. And you know what I learned? Don’t force anybody into anything. Therefore, [Sam] wasn’t interested in the inside to make how is Venom like us? How do we deal with the Venom, and Marvel is all metaphors.”
Like Arad states, Raimi’s previously opened up about his own personal disappointment with Spider-Man 3, saying that, yes, it was not his idea to add Venom and his alter ego Eddie Brock into the mix. The filmmaker himself wanted to focus on Sandman, but Arad and Sony wanted to up the stakes and one way of doing that was to make room for a big-hitter like Venom.
In fact, Arad initially planned to make a Venom spinoff movie straight away, but the total lack of interest in more of Topher Grace’s version put paid to that idea. The project was then back on during the Andrew Garfield years with Drew Goddard attached to helm it. Finally, once Spider-Man jumped ship to the MCU, Venom got off the ground with Tom Hardy starring and Ruben Fleischer in the director’s chair.
After so long stuck in development hell, and after the letdown of Spider-Man 3, let’s just hope that Venom delivers when it arrives in theaters on October 5th.
