Which leaves us with one burning question: What rating will it get?
In the comics, Eddy Brock’s Venom is anything but a family-friendly character. The anti-hero can commonly be seen running around, ripping people’s limbs off and sucking out their brains (no, I’m not joking).
When Sony announced that they were making a Venom movie, most people naturally assumed it was going to be R-rated, even with its ties into the Spider-Man and potentially Marvel Universe.
Other reports then came out saying that the movie might instead be targeting a PG-13 rating so that they can bring in a wider audience (which I think is so lame).
Venom director Ruben Fleischer recently made comments that don’t confirm an MPAA rating one way or another but does let us know that his new movie is aiming to stay true to its source material.
“Our movie wants to honor the comics as close as we can, tonally,” he said via comicbook.com. “In the comics, he bits people’s heads off and eats brains. It would be weird to make a movie with Venom if he wasn’t doing that. We tried to honor it as closely as possible. This is definitely a darker, more violent, more vicious Marvel character than I think anyone's ever seen before.”
That’s all reassuring, but Fleischer then went on to say that Venom will be “pushed to the hilt” when compared to other comic-book movies and that it will be “a little more real and grounded and in our world.”
That gives me pause, as “pushed to the hilt” makes me think they’re going to see how much they can get away with in a PG-13 movie.
Personally, I don’t want to see anything but an R-rated Venom movie. I respect Fleischer’s comments and commitment to the source material, but there are things that just can’t be done in a PG-13 Venom movie. At the end of the day, the rating may not be the most important thing about Venom, but it’s going to make a difference on my level of excitement — if Deadpool and Logan can do it, why can’t Eddy?
What do you think? Should Venom be rated R or PG-13? Are you going to see the movie either way? Let us know in the comments below!