Earlier this month, the Powers That Be confirmed what many had already considered to be common logic – Venom will be rated PG-13 when it releases on October 5th, despite the incessant cries for an R-rated cut.
That groundswell of support clearly hasn’t fallen on deaf ears, as Tom Hardy recently told MTV (h/t Bloody Disgusting) that he’s still hopeful for an R-rated version of Venom in the not-so-distant future, as he’s well aware of the character’s comic book roots, which tend to be steeped in graphic content and scenes of the titular symbiote feasting on human flesh – and, more specifically, human heads…
It’s all pretty grisly, but if Tom Hardy has his way, it’s really a question of when, rather than if, Venom will receive an alternate, R-rated cut:
It’s a PG-13 in the States. But to be fair, the thing can fulcrum into R-Rated. My littlest ones, they watch Spider-Man and Venom quite comfortably and Venom toys appear and LEGO appear in my nostril in the morning, you know what I mean? So it’s not like they’re scared by him. And at the same time there’s a lot within the real estate that you can actually imbue with a complete sense of gratuitous ultra-violence if you really wanted to, and I think you’ve got the right people for that job if you want to push it. That’s where I’d love to go with it.
Sadly, the buck doesn’t stop with Hardy; there are numerous executives at Sony (and Marvel!) calling the shots when it comes to Venom‘s rating, so even if the actor is all for an R-rated version being included on the inevitable Blu-ray, there are still many more hurdles to overcome. But still, we live in hope.
Venom breaks new ground for comic book movies on October 5th, and only then will we know if Sony’s fledgling universe has a shot of becoming Hollywood’s next major franchise. Morbius, Silk, Nightwatch, and Kraven the Hunter are all waiting in the wings, so there’s still plenty of ground for Sony to cover beyond 2019.