54. That’s the combined age of Max Landis and Josh Trank, the writer-director team behind found-footage super-powers movie Chronicle. Who feels like a slacker now, eh? 20th Century Fox is keen on a Chronicle sequel, which Landis will script. Meanwhile, Trank is in talks to helm another super-powered picture, in the black-clad shape of Venom.

Chronicle has been a solid performer for Fox since it went on release last month, earning $105m off a reputed sub-$15m budget (although the marketing campaign must’ve cost more than a blowjob off a tramp). And it is those numbers, coupled with a mostly positive critical reception – as opposed to any particular dangling story threads – which has encouraged Fox to task Landis to set to work on a follow-up.

But if Landis is definitely back onboard then Trank’s return is open to question. The rumour was that the wunderkind director would be charged with rebooting Fox’s Fantastic Four franchise if Chronicle performed according to expectations (which it did), but reports now indicate that he is likely to defect to rival studio Sony in the name of another Marvel Comics-based property.

That property is Venom, a character who previously appeared as a nemesis in the third Spider-Man flick, and has long been rumoured for a big screen vehicle of his own. Indeed Hunger Games director Gary Ross was previously tipped to make a Venom movie (Ross also, as it happens, put in a scripting shift on the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man 4-that-never-was).

Whether Trank signs on the dangled dotted or not, any Venom movie is likely to recast the character from the villain of Spider-Man 3 to anti-hero (mirroring the journey of his comic book incarnation as his popularity increased with readers), with bad guy duties surely instead falling to arch-foe Carnage. Imagine Venom… only red… yup, that’s pretty much all there is to it.

Source: The LA Times