Sony wants 'Venom' to start their own R-rated Marvel franchise

After the R-rated success of Fox's Marvel films Deadpool and Logan, Sony is planning to follow suit with an R-rated Cinematic Universe of their own, using Spider-Man characters. But apparently without actually including Spider-Man himself, which is strange, and starting with Venom.

It may also seem like an odd choice because Spider-Man isn't nearly as R-rated as fare like Deadpool and Logan. But now that Spider-Man is joining the Avengers over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, rival studio Sony is looking at other Marvel characters they own the rights to, and they want to start their new universe with an R-rated Venom movie. According to Collider, the film won't be a spinoff and will be completely unrelated from the MCU - including the Marvel and Sony co-produced Spider-Man: Homecoming, the July 2017 film which is apart of Marvel's canon.

Basically if this works, Sony will start building an entirely separate universe of Spider-Man characters, that probably can't legally feature Spider-Man. And at least some of the movies will be R-rated. There's also a good chance all those new Spidey-less films could end up like Amazing Spider-Man 3 or the Sinister Six movie: cancelled before ever seeing the light of day.

It sounds like a pretty rushed and desperate plan overall, but we can't say we blame Sony. The studio has no big franchise to speak of after losing James Bond and seeing their Ghostbusters reboot flop, so they don't have much choice but to try and copy Fox's superhero movie blueprints. So what other movies does Sony have in the hopper besides the Venom movie? They're also looking into a Silver Sable/Black Cat movie, which would be a female-led superhero film. Those characters should be able to work on their own better than Venom, especially Silver Sable, so it's not too crazy of an idea. They also could potentially do well in an R-rated film, though it's not clear if Sony intends on going that route with their film or if the plan is to only make Venom cater to the 17-and-older crowd.