Sam Raimi has admitted that he’s never seen the new Venom films, but would be up for a Stephen King adaptation.
Sam Raimi is on the press rounds for Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness which released this week in the UK.
Raimi is no stranger to the comic book movie: he is of course one of the founding architects, with his early 2000s Spider-Man trilogy establishing the blueprint for the successful creation of a superhero blockbuster. However, the third instalment of that trilogy, by Raimi’s own admission, didn’t work as well, chiefly because of the inclusion of the Venom character, a darker anti-hero figure that Raimi was never that interested in.
As he promotes Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, Raimi has admitted to Collider that he’s still disinterested in the character all these years later, stating that he still hasn’t seen the commercially successful Tom Hardy takes on the Lethal Protector and never really ‘got’ the character:
“It was really more just that I didn’t understand the character that well. It wasn’t close to my heart. The best thing I like about Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man is that they made relatable characters that I understand. Even if they were confused, like Norman Osborn, they still have goodness in their heart. They want them to do the right thing, or Peter Parker. Or even J Jonah Jameson has goodness in his heart. When I read about Venom, which I hadn’t read as a kid, I had to catch up on it when they wanted him to be in the movie. I didn’t recognise enough humanity within that character to be able to identify with him properly. That’s really what it boils down to.”
So, despite all of the rumoured cameos in the Multiverse Of Madness, maybe don’t expect Venom to show up.
However, in an interview with Cinemablend, Raimi did state that he was far more interested in Stephen King and would love to work with the horror author at some point, whilst admitting that most of his favourite King novels had already been adapted for the screen.
“Oh, absolutely. I love The Shining, but someone already had that. And I loved Carrie, but that had already been made by the time I had read it. And then his Night Shift collection is so brilliant. So many of those stories would’ve made great movies. Rob Reiner made a great one that I wanted to make too. So there’s been plenty of great King stories that I wish I could get involved with. Maybe in the future we can work together.”
Raimi and King does sound like a dream team so we’re keeping our fingers crossed for that one. Just don’t expect their collaboration to feature a symbiotic alien with a warped sense of morality.
You can catch Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness now.
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