WTF: More People Have Watched The 'Venom' Trailer Than Any Spider-Man Trailer; Todd McFarlane Believes Spawn/Venom Crossover Movie Is Possible

In a new interview, comics legend Todd McFarlane explains his belief that a Spawn and Venom crossover movie might happen one day, and he's already angling to direct it. We'll get into the likelihood of that in just a second, and also try to figure out how the trailer for the upcoming Venom solo movie has somehow shattered the record of YouTube views for any Spider-Man movie. Get a breakdown of the numbers below.

The Spawn comics tell the story of a murdered black ops agent who is sent to Hell because of the innocent people he killed when he was alive. He sells his soul to a demon in order to see his wife again, but is returned to Earth five years later as a brooding, disfigured, hyper-violent anti-hero only to discover she's already moved on and started a new family.

Despite not having any directing experience, McFarlane has basically willed his way into the director's chair for his upcoming Spawn movie and kept creative control over his character. (He also wrote the script.) Part of the way he was able to do that was to partner with Blumhouse Productions, Jason Blum's production company that upended the traditional Hollywood business model with its small budgets and extremely high box office returns.

In a new interview with Comic Book Resources, McFarlane – who also co-created the character of Venom – is already getting excited about the chance of seeing those two characters share the screen one day:

Here's a big "What If." What if Sony distributes Spawn? Then is it possible that in the future Sony could have a crossover with Venom and Spawn? It's possible. So, I will be presenting that possibility to the Sony executives when we get ready.

My conversation with them would be, why wouldn't you? Here's what I know. Let's say Venom is huge — I hope it is — then no matter who distributes Spawn, the first thing you will see in every trailer will be, "From the co-creator of Venom." So, then my question to Sony is, why would you let one of your competitors use that line, given that it was your effort that made Venom work? Your money that made Venom work? Your marketing that made Venom work? I think it's worth asking, then, what happens if they both work? And then what happens ten years down the line, when they want to do a Spawn/Venom crossover and they get the guy who helped create both those characters to direct it? Might be kind of cool.

If you read comics in the 1990s, your head might be spinning at the idea of seeing those two dark anti-hero characters teaming up. But here's the instant problem with McFarlane's vision: in 2014, Blumhouse signed a 10-year first-look deal with Universal Pictures. Universal is one of the few major movie studios that isn't currently exploiting a deep roster of comic book properties, so I can't imagine a world in which Universal would pass on this movie and let Sony distribute it.

Meanwhile, ScreenCrush crunched the numbers and found that the most trailer for Sony's Tom Hardy-led Venom movie has a staggering 64 million views on YouTube. Avengers: Infinity War has it beat by a long shot with 202 million, but when you compare Venom's view count to all of the previous Spider-Man trailers (even including the upcoming Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) Venom's 64 million blows them all out of the water.

How did that happen? The first Venom teaser only had 19 million views. Is the character of Venom so popular that the first trailer to show Tom Hardy as the alien symbiote would skyrocket to more than three times as many views as the teaser? It's possible for companies to purchase YouTube views to boost their view counts, though I'm not accusing Sony of doing that in this case. 2007's Spider-Man 3, the only Spider-Man film to prominently feature Venom, is the highest-grossing Spidey movie ever made; it pulled in more than $890 million at the worldwide box office. It seems like audiences really dig this character, so maybe Venom will perform like gangbusters when it arrives in theaters on October 5, 2018.