Imagine how powerful Marvel and Disney could be right if they had all of the comic book publisher's superheroes at their disposal? If the 1990s never happened, we'd be wondering how The Amazing Spider-Man would tie in to the Fantastic Four which would tie in to Ghost Rider and the Hulk. And hey how about that X-men vs. The Avengers movie? Unfortunately, we'll probably never get to see any of that stuff, because when Marvel was first jumping into the movie game, they licensed out their most popular properties at the time(which didn't include The Avengers) to other companies. It wasn't until around the time of Iron Man in 2008 that they smartened up and went into business for themselves, and obviously it's been quite a success.
With Marvel proving that forming a cohesive shared universe is the path to $1B grossing flicks, these other studios would be smart to attempt the same thing on a much smaller scale, using the characters at their disposal. 20th Century Fox has already done that with the X-men side of things, but Sony has been slow to do the same with Spider-Man. With a movie based on the Spidey villain, Venom, in the works possibly with Josh Trank(Chronicle) directing, that may be about to change. While talking to Hollywood.com, producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach explained some of their plans to make Spider-man's world a bit bigger...
Tolmach: "He was a journalist. He had the wrong story, he got in trouble for it, he got fired. The whole essence to us for the Marvel characters. Stay close to the bible, stay close to the emotional story, and the rest is fun."
"Hopefully,all these worlds will live together in peace someday,"
Arad then went on to give their idea of what a Venom movie should look like....
Arad: "It's an Eddie Brock story. We want to be as close to the comics as possible. Especially in Eddie Brock's story. But again, pseudo-science is becoming science. All these tidbits about webs, artificial webs, is a huge industry now. Spiderwebs have unique qualities that will be huge for communications, fibers, and so forth. So we have taken the approach that we want to make the huge amazing movie about Eddie."
Eddie Brock/Venom isn't a part of Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man, so if there is a tie-in it will likely be subtle, or begin in some sort of post-credits sequence setting it up. It might be more feasible to save it for the Spider-Man sequel, which Sony has been quick to get moving on. They've already hired Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman(Star Trek) to write the script, while pegging May 2nd 2014 as a target release date.
This isn't really huge news, as I think most of us would have assumed a Venom movie would have to be incorporated into The Amazing Spider-Man somehow. Sony's plans for the character after Spider-Man 3 were essentially the same thing. It's just a smart, proven winner of a business model, and we're going to be seeing a lot more of it.
