If you were one of the lucky ones to escape the internet’s surprisingly firm grasp on you for the weekend, a few bits of interesting news have arrived over the past few days.

The first is that Venom, the long in development and once thought to be dead movie based on the popular Spider-Man villain of the same name, is alive and kicking again at Sony Pictures.

It was reported that Sony is once again actively developing the project, which they are hoping will lead to the creation of a successful new franchise for them. The movie was thought to be dead in the water back in October of 2014, but about a year ago after Sony and Marvel came to agreement to share Spider-Man, it sounded like Venom could still happen. Things have been pretty quiet since then.

Surprisingly enough, it sounds as if Sony has no plans of introducing the character as a villain in their latest reboot of the Spider-Man franchise, with new star Tom Holland playing the webslinger, before moving into the spinoff movie. Instead the plan is to have their potential Venom franchise exist separate from and unrelated to the new Spidey universe. Given how things went when Venom was brought into the mix for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, this is an understandable decision.

One can’t help but wonder if this new life for Venom is thanks to another anti-hero, a one Mr. Deadpool, and all of his recent success at the box office. And if this is the case, the question then becomes whether or not Sony is thinking about attempting their own R-rated superhero franchise here or if they’ll stick to the PG-13 comic book flicks. In the past we’ve heard about a “darker” Venom, so it should be interesting to see how it plays out. Fittingly enough, Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick worked on Venom once upon a time, but Sony won’t be using their script here. They’ve hired a new writer in Dante Harper to pen the latest draft.

So where will this new attempt at bringing Venom to life, if it does indeed make it to our eyeballs, take us? We don’t know just yet. It would probably make the most sense go the Carnage route, but I only say that as someone who’s not very familiar with the comics. We have heard rumors that Carnage could be involved in the past, so we’ll have to wait and see. While you wait, you could check out that Venom fan film with True Blood star Ryan Kwanten from a few years back if you missed it.

What would you like to see in a Venom movie?

[Source: Heat Vision]