Venom aka Antidote starring Tom Hardy will begin filming in the fall, but we’re slowly learning what direction the film could be going. Variety recently spoke to director Ruben Fleischer and Columbia Pictures president Sanford Panitch about their direction for Venom, is which is going to be horror focused.
For “Venom,” Sony has tapped director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) to bring the menacing arachnoid to the masses. In the comic books and the film Venom is hatched after reporter Eddie Brock (Hardy) bonds with an alien symbiote — a union that gives him deadly powers. “I’ve always been drawn to the more antihero superheroes,” Fleischer says. “There’s a dark element to [Venom] and a wit that has always appealed to me.”
Fleischer says the film will deal with Venom’s origins and with the Jekyll and Hyde relationship Brock has with the alien symbiote. “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.’”
Panitch suggesting that they’ll be taking inspiration from the films of John Carptenter and David Cronenberg, it’s not hard to imagine what he’s referring to.
Panitch says “Venom” will draw on the work of John Carpenter or David Cronenberg while promising “more pop and fun.”
Their films aren’t named, but my assumption is that he is talking about Carpenter’s alien isolation monster flick The Thing and Cronenberg’s The Fly.
The two dark body horror remakes just happen to be vastly superior to their original incarnations, they also fit nicely with the symbiote mythology. It’s currently looking like it’ll be created in a lab, there was some strong suggestion to this with the Venom teases in Amazing Spider-Man 2. The working title Antidote also suggests a new cinematic origin.
THE THING (1982): In remote Antarctica, a group of American research scientists are disturbed at their base camp by a helicopter shooting at a sled dog. When they take in the dog, it brutally attacks both human beings and canines in the camp and they discover that the beast can assume the shape of its victims. A resourceful helicopter pilot (Kurt Russell) and the camp doctor (Richard Dysart) lead the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against the vicious creature before it picks them all off, one by one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BzwxJ-M_M0&t=57s
THE FLY (1986): When scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) completes his teleportation device, he decides to test its abilities on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a housefly slips in during the process, leading to a merger of man and insect. Initially, Brundle appears to have undergone a successful teleportation, but the fly’s cells begin to take over his body. As he becomes increasingly fly-like, Brundle’s girlfriend (Geena Davis) is horrified as the person she once loved deteriorates into a monster.
The quote could help further confirm the aim to make Venom R-rated which makes sense if Carnage is indeed the film’s villain. Omega Underground previously revealed is extremely likely via an F-bomb laced audition tape for Anna Weying aka She-Venom.
Venom begins filming on September 1st in Atlanta and New York City with a release date of October 5th, 2018.
SOURCE: VARIETY