Sony Pictures is developing an animated Venom movie, because apparently the Spider-Verse is now a permanent state of being rather than a film franchise.
The project, reported by The Hollywood Reporter, will be helmed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, the Final Destination filmmakers who clearly know how to orchestrate creative carnage. Whether that translates to a sentient alien symbiote comedy-horror hybrid remains to be seen, but at least it's not another origin story.
Here's the thing: Sony's animated Spider-Verse films are legitimately great. Into the Spider-Verse reinvented what superhero animation could be. Across the Spider-Verse somehow topped it. These movies have visual ambition, narrative risk-taking, and emotional depth that most live-action blockbusters can only dream about.
But Sony is also the studio that gave us Morbius and watched Madame Web crash and burn in real time. Their live-action Spider-Man universe has been a disaster, churning out films that range from "aggressively mediocre" to "did anyone actually watch this before releasing it?"
The animated Venom pivot is smart in that context. If your live-action symbiote trilogy is running out of steam (and let's be honest, Tom Hardy has been doing all the heavy lifting), why not move the character into the medium where Sony actually knows what it's doing?
The question is whether Sony is smartly capitalizing on the Spider-Verse success or desperately trying to replicate it until the formula breaks. Venom works as a character because of his bizarre tonal contradictions—body horror mixed with buddy comedy, existential dread alongside stupid jokes about eating bad guys. An animated film could lean into that weirdness in ways live-action never quite managed.
