by: S. Scott Stanikmas – Senior Staff Writer

Venom, the alien symbiote anti-hero from the pages of Marvel Comics hat has plagued Spider-Man for years, is a popular character and one that fans have waited a long time to see done right on the big screen. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 was a travesty and a real blow to the character in the public eye, from the rushed “origin” to having Topher Grace portray Eddie Brock (and the less said about Emo Peter Parker the better off we all are).

But after years of on-again, off-again antics, Sony has finally greenlit a Venom film for production. But the particulars are a bit intriguing if not downright confusing.

The Hollywood Reporter has the news that Dante Harper has been hired by the studio to pen the upcoming flick. This is a bit weird as the studio already had a script from Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, the duo behind Zombieland and the ultra-popular Deadpool (673 Million and counting). While Harper’s biggest claim to fame is Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and some rewrite work on Edge of Tomorrow.

Unless the Wernick and Reese script is downright unworkable why not hire them back to polish the existing script and go from there? It boggles my mind. I assume the reason they are not doing things this way is the second part of the announcement.

The next part is just as off the wall. Apparently Venom will not be connected to the upcoming Spider-Man film set to star Tom Holland as the wall-crawler. That’s not to say that it won’t connect somewhere down the line but for now we’ll see the Symbiote Superstar fly solo. This is crazy, the appeal of Venom is the way that the character is introduced. It would make far more sense to set the character up over a couple of Spider-Man films before spinning him off into his own film. Doing things this way chances killing the character before he ever gets to Spider-Man. This just feels like Sony doing their best to screw up the Spider-Man universe again before it’s off the ground again. It stinks of greed.

In a world of movie universes why wouldn’t Sony want to try and connect an already popular character with the massively successful Marvel Cinematic Universe? It could be that they don’t want to wait to see how they could shoehorn Venom into the MCU and just want to give the character his due. But that doesn’t mean Sony couldn’t tie Venom and Spidey together on their own. It just makes no sense, especially seeing how closely tied together the two are in the comics.

However this shakes out, it looks like we’re getting a new Venom film sometime in the future. As soon as we get an exact date, director or star we’ll let you know right here.