Venom Carnage sounds like a terrible metal band, but instead it’s a revelation of Sony’s superhero strategy. Namely, the superheroes aren’t doing so well for the, what with the douchebag dads and declining box office… so let’s see how the villains do.
On the heels of what’s probably a Black Cat movie, Deadline notes that the Venom spinoff which has been in the works for forever is also moving forward, with 2017 being the targeted release date.
Honestly, it’s not the worst idea. Venom is awful as a character, little more than the inevitable evil knockoff every superhero has to fight at some point, but he’s beloved and there’s really no way to explain the symbiote and Eddie Brock’s connection to it without taking a whole movie to lay it out. Similarly, as flat as Venom is, Carnage is even flatter. For those unfamiliar, here’s his entire personality: He kills you, because it’s fun. Seriously, that’s all there is to Cletus. Yes, he’s named Cletus. Really, he needs Venom, or to be shrunken down into the Microverse, to be remotely interesting.
We just hope nothing’s watered down. The entire appeal of Carnage stories is that the guy is so evil he makes Venom look good, which is pretty hard to do when you look like H.P. Lovecraft’s Spider-Man. We also hope they insert a colon into that name because, really, Venom Carnage? Half the audience is going to show up expecting a Will Ferrell comedy about a hair metal band. Which we admit, we’d actually see. Maybe Sony could combine the two.