Venom is slated to hit theaters next week, and fans of the symbiote are gearing up for what should be one of the best comic book films ever. Tom Hardy is an amazing actor, and placing him in the role of Eddie Brock already puts the Venom movie in another league altogether. Fans speculated that the film would be Rated R due to the dark nature of the character. When it was revealed that the film would be PG-13, fans then speculated that Sony would release a Rated R version later on. According to the film's producer and director, those fans are incorrect.
Director Ruben Fleischer, and producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach sat down with Comicbook.com recently, and revealed that there were never any Rated-R plans for the Venom film. "To me, R is not a consideration," Arad stated. "Can you get away with not R so that other people can see? So that younger people can see? I made an animated show. There was a lot of Venom in there. It was in '94. There's no reason to put in violence. To define what Venom is as violence. He's not. He's the lethal protector, which is a very different thing. We want to be really true to the comics. Today, in CGI and stuff, we can make Venom bite your head. But we don't have to show the head going side to side like, 'that actually tastes good.' It's irrelevant. What's relevant is that you finally understood, is that a bad guy? Yeah."
Fleischer echoed his remarks. "We only ever talked about this movie as being PG13," he said. "What I've said in the past is that we wanted to push the violence to the hilt. The Dark Knight was always a huge reference point for me, personally, just as far as how far you could take a PG-13 because that movie they put a pen through a guy's forehead so I figure if you can do that in a PG-13 movie you can bite some heads off."