'Chronicle's' Josh Trank Could Direct 'Spider-Man' Spin-Off Movie 'Venom'

Before Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 was released, the one thing fans were most excited about was we'd finally get to see Venom on the big screen. The character is arguably the most popular of Spider-Man's villains and to potentially see his origins and battles with the web-slinger was unbelievably exciting. After the film was released, though, the sparse use of the character was listed as one of the its biggest disappointments.

Soon after Spider-Man 3, Sony wised-up to the character's popularity and began developing a Venom centric movie with Hunger Games director Gary Ross at the helm. It never panned out. But, with the new Amazing Spider-Man around the corner and a hot new superhero director in town, the stars might just be aligning once again.

The Los Angeles Times reports Sony is in negotiations with Chronicle director Josh Trank to helm a new Venom movie. There's more after the jump.

According to the LA Times article, Sony refused to comment but their anonymous source said the script would not be the same one Ross was developing several years back.

While Josh Trank's Chronicle wasn't an official comic book movie, it had better superhero action and characters than innumerable, big name comic book movies with much larger budgets. He was recently rumored to be rebooting the Fantastic Four and while Trank all but denied that rumor, we'll have to wait and see if Venom is any more real.

For those who don't know much about Venom, he's a gooey, fluid like creature who has many of the same abilities as Spider-Man. In fact, he came to be because of Spider-Man found an alien black suit. But once Peter Parker figured out the alien suit was making him do bad things (i.e. – emo Spidey in Spider-Man 3) he discarded it, only to be picked up by Eddie Brock.

A Venom movie, in theory, sounds great but part of what makes the character so memorable is how evil he is. I'm not sure how you'd handle that at the heart of a movie but I trust that, if Trank takes the job, he'll have an idea worth pursing.