Sony Might Have PG-13 Plans For ‘Venom’ After All
Move trailers for Marvel’s upcoming Spider-Man spinoff, Venom, have truly impressed a lot of fans. Furthermore, in the wake of movies like Deadpool and its sequel, excitement has loomed about the prospect of an R-rating for such a movie.
At 2018 San Diego Comic-Con panel, director Ruben Fleisher assured fans he was going for an R rating, but that no longer appears to be the case.
According to a report from Indiewire, Sony may still wish to keep the movie PG-13, especially considering the potential for crossover titles in the future.
In the comic books, Venom is a character known for being particularly violent, biting people’s heads off and generally making a mess of things. Vying for a PG-13 rating would be a serious departure from the character’s source material, but in the end, studio executives are reportedly looking at the universal appeal of such a film being a potential goldmine. An R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would effectively restrict younger children from seeing the upcoming comic book anti-hero.
In 2016 Deadpool was released amid skeptical movie studio executives at 20th Century Fox, but the Ryan Reynolds-led Marvel movie went on to score hugely at the box office. In total the movie took more than $780 million on a reported budget of $58 million.
Deadpool came to theaters after more than one public service announcement by Ryan Reyolds for parents to refrain from taking their young children to see the movie, despite it appearing like a standard super-hero film.
Its sequel, Deadpool 2, scored similarly at the box office after being released earlier this year. Altogether it couped an impressive $733 million in box office revenue on a budget that was roughly doubled from the movie’s predecessor. Deadpool 2 remains in the fifth highest-grossing film of 2018, ahead of more family-friendly ventures like Solo: A Star Wars Story and Ant-Man and the Wasp.
In a screenplay by Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinkner, Kelly Marcel, and Will Beall, Venom is set to open on October 5 and will be distributed by Sony Pictires. The movie stars Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Ruiz Ahmed, Scott Haze, and Reid Scott.
It follows a journalist by the name of Eddie Borough who comes into contact with an alien symbiote that bonds with him, giving him super powers and changing him to the titular anti-hero known as Venom.
Tom Hardy previously appeared as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Revenant.
