{"id":292783,"date":"2025-11-15T07:43:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T07:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/292783\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T07:43:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T07:43:19","slug":"why-was-venom-the-only-success-of-sonys-marvel-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/292783\/","title":{"rendered":"Why was Venom the only success of Sony’s Marvel franchise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, Sony Pictures dreamed of building its own Marvel Cinematic Universe \u2014 one powered entirely by Spider-Man villains and side characters, but just without ol\u2019 webhead himself. Shockingly, that turned out to be a problem. Morbius<\/a>, Madame Web<\/a>, and Kraven the Hunter<\/a> all crashed and burned at the box office, earning the kind of reviews that make studio executives reconsider their life choices. And yet, in the middle of that chaos, one franchise actually clicked: Venom. The critics didn\u2019t love it, but audiences did, so much so that the trilogy grossed $1.8 billion worldwide<\/a>. So what made Venom resonate when Sony\u2019s other Marvel misfires didn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

The Playlist<\/a> recently posed that question to Ruben Fleischer, who directed the first Venom movie. \u201cI can\u2019t really speak to too much because I haven\u2019t seen all the other ones,\u201d Fleischer said. \u201cBut I think something that people love about \u2018Venom\u2019 is that he\u2019s funny. You know what I mean? It doesn\u2019t take itself too seriously. It\u2019s kind of a ridiculous premise that you have an alien living inside you and sharing space with you.\u201c<\/p>\n

Fleischer continued, \u201cI kind of leaned into the\u2014I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s really body horror\u2014but \u2018All of Me\u2019 with Steve Martin was a big inspiration. \u2018An American Werewolf in London\u2019 was another one. Both are tonally on the more humorous side of things. I think \u2018Venom\u2019 is darker among the superhero franchises, just in terms of the way the character looks and his attitude. But he\u2019s also really, really funny. So Tom Hardy was able to realize that wonderfully. And I think the charisma of Tom and of Venom himself is largely what has made it so popular among audiences.\u201c<\/p>\n

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Not being able to use Spider-Man created an \u201cinteresting challenge\u201d for Fleischer and the team. Against all odds, they managed to pull it off, turning Venom into a character that wasn\u2019t defined by his relationship with Spider-Man. \u201cFrom my memory of it, granted it was a while ago, but from my memory of it, it was always distinct from Spider-Man,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe there was the possibility of them crossing paths down the road, but inherent to ours was that it couldn\u2019t be defined by that.\u201c<\/p>\n

Tom Hardy\u2019s unhinged performance significantly contributed to the film\u2019s success, and while Venom\u2019s built-in popularity certainly gave the franchise an advantage over Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter, there had to be a way to make those characters work without turning the movies into absolute dumpster fires.<\/p>\n

\"JoBlo<\/p>\n

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