A long gestating rumour in the movie/ comic community has been that Sony are planning a Venom spin-off flick from the Spider-Man franchise.
The character was a catastrophic failure in Spider-Man 3 (not the only failure in that movie, but one of its worst) and a lot of people attribute that to director Sam Raimi as he wasn't a "fan" of Venom and didn't really know what to do with him (as you'll read below)... I don't see a new movie doing much better and I think they should stop where they are with this one!
This is from the Sci-fi Wire website:
Sony is officially moving forward with its Spider-Man spin off movie focusing on Venom and has hired Zombieland writing team Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese to pen the script, the writers told a group of reporters.
"We had a really great relationship with Sony on [Zombieland], and so that was a nice in for us there," Reese said in a group interview. "It gave us a leg up."
The duo is already working on the script, but they are sworn to secrecy on the details. "We're under strict orders on Venom," Wernick said. "We can't talk about it. It's just super secret."
Unlike Spider-Man director Sam Raimi, who has admitted that he wasn't a Venom fan before directing Spider-Man 3, Wernick and Reese said they are big fans of the comic character and have recently been doing their research to ensure that they do justice to him. "We read [Venom] growing up, but we were not experts," Reese said. "We certainly know the mythology of Venom, but went back and learned more when it became clear that we could actually get this job."
Ultimately, the writing team has fan interest at heart, they said. Even as they are just getting started on the script, they admit fan scrutiny is on their minds. "Absolutely. I'm terrified," Reese said with a nervous laugh. "It's source material that everybody knows and everybody's familiar with and everybody loves. There's a burden on you to meet the expectations of people. A lot of people are curious about Venom."