Sony to Adapt “Maximum Carnage?”

A new theory suggests that Sony’s upcoming Spider-Man spin-offs could be building to an adaptation of Maximum Carnage as a team-up movie in the vein of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers.

Sony has the movie rights to Spider-Man and all of his supporting cast; however, after concluding Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy and failing to create a shared universe from Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man films, the company has decided to downplay Peter Parker (who’s being rented out to the MCU) and instead focus on other characters with films like Venom (coming out October 5), Morbius, Nightwatch and Silver and Black.

All of those characters were involved in Maximum Carnage, the big Spider-Man event of the 1990s. (The Clone Saga wasn’t an event, just an interminably long story arc.) Carnage, for those who do not know, is an alien symbiote like Venom, but bonded with a human serial killer named Cletus Kassidy; in this story, he breaks out of prison alongside his girlfriend, Shriek, who can compel people to violence. They and their followers soon create chaos through New York, with Spider-Man teaming up with the various villains and anti-heroes to stop them.

According to screenrant.com, Carnage will reportedly appear briefly in Venom, though not be the main villain as was initially reported. It would seem like a waste of a good supervillain to not set him up for a later film, and perhaps even one where Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) needs the help of other anti-heroes to stop him.

Technically we do not even know if all of these films are supposed to be set in the same continuity, but it seems likely, since this whole initiative started with an attempt to make an Amazing Spider-Man cinematic universe. And if this is their plan, Carnage would be a powerful and wicked enough villain to draw everyone into a fight.

While most of these movies star anti-heroes, there have been reports of a Silk movie planned. Silk is a superhero who is basically Peter Parker as a girl, down to having the same origins. Could she be his replacement in this film, vying with her grimmer allies about whether or not to outright kill Carnage? For now fans will just have to wait and see what Sony is planning.