FANTASTIC FOUR Director Josh Trank Pitched a "Hard-R" VENOM Movie That the Producer Hated
After the success of Chronicle in 2012, director Josh Trank was a hot commodity in Hollywood. Everyone in Hollywood wanted to meet with the director, and he was lining up jobs all over town. He became attached to a feature film adaptation of the video game Shadow of the Colossus, an adaptation of The Red Star for Warner Bros., and jumped on board to direct The Fantastic Four for Fox.
The director was also briefly attached to direct a film about the Spider-Man villain Venom, but when he pitched his ‘Hard-R” take on the film to producer Matt Tolmach, Tolmach hated it. During a recent interview with Polygon, Trank shared some details on his take on Venom and what went down.
The film was described as "a hard-R Venom in the vein of The Mask," the 1994 Jim Carrey film. The outlet says that Trank and Big Fan director Rob Siegel spent two weeks developing a treatment for their take on the movie which was apparently met with disdain from Tolmach. Tranks said:
“I didn’t like how Matt Tolmach was coming at me in that situation, because it felt very kind of authoritative. Well, if you don’t like what I’m doing, and you’re telling me that I have to do something along the lines of what you want, and you’re going to tell it to me in this way — sorry, but I have other things I can be doing.”
From all the behind-the-scenes drama of Fantastic Four, it’s safe to say that Trank had a problem with authority. Every person I have ever met in a position of authority acts authoritative. I guess Tolmach was acting authoritative in a jerky way? I don’t know, but obviously the two didn’t get along and things didn’t work out.
The Venom movie eventually ended up getting made with Tom Hardy, and it ended up being ok. I know a lot of fans wanted Venom to be rated R, but that was never going to happen. Producer Avi Arad previously explained:
"You know what? When you hear Venom…forget Venom. When you hear, Carnage, the only thing you can think of is R. But, if you know his story, if you really know the comic, there’s no R here. He’s a tortured soul. It’s not about what he does, because we never have to show the knife going from here to there, and the blood is pouring. What you have to show is, what is the motivation? Was he born like that, or it’s someone we should feel for, because if you are succeeding to make a villain someone you can feel for, jackpot."
He makes some good points. In the end, it’s the story that matters. Hopefully, director Andy Serkis and his team came up with a good story for the upcoming sequel, especially with Carnage making his big debut!
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is scheduled to arrive on June 25, 2021.