So I was right about the villain, but wrong about who'd play him:
Topher Grace and Sideways star Thomas Haden Church have inadvertently been confirmed as the new Spider-Man villains by Kirsten Dunst. After months of speculation about the actors behind the masks of the Spider-Man 3 bad guys - and the characters they'll play, Dunst, who is back to play Spider-Man's love interest Mary Jane, has let slip in an interview the identities of both the actors and their evil alter-egos. Speaking to website Zap2it.com, she says, "We have really great people as the villains in this film - Thomas Haden Church and Topher Grace - Venom and Sandman... Maybe I wasn't supposed to say that." Dunst then reversed her claim, admitting Church will play Sandman and Grace, Venom.
So we are getting the multiple villain treatment. We'll have to see if the end result is greater than the sum of its parts, which wasn't the case with the Schumacher Batman movies, for example.
Flint Marko isn't exactly a nuanced character, so Church won't have to stretch too hard. Compared to Venom, however, he's not going to be very impressive on the big screen. Raimi might follow the comics somewhat and maybe have Venom take on Sandman, due to Eddie Brock's delusion that he's actually a hero.
How are they going to introduce Venom, is my question? I kinda doubt Raimi intends to re-create the Secret Wars in their entirety (although that would be pretty hilarious). Does John Jameson bring the symbiote back from the moon instead of becoming the Man-Wolf? Maye he finds it in a meteor, a la The Blob. Maybe he leaves a pot of coffee out for a couple weeks and it develops sentience.
This actually happened in my sophomore year apartment.
I actually drafted this last week, but just got around to posting it today. Not to worry, I'll get right on those mean BackTalkers.
Sandman would be a weak primary villain, in my opinion. I'm still wondering why they bothered to show Harry discovering Dad's Goblin stash if they weren't planning on following through with it.
I did here something regarding a Hobgoblin introduction/development at some point in the third movie, which makes sense, but who knows.
Jameson bringing the symbiote back from space sounds like what they're getting at. They did that in the cartoon and I thought it worked well(especially with haveing the shuttle crash-land on the Brooklyn Bridge).
I guess all we can do is wait and see what Raimi has in store.
In the Ultimate continuity, Venom wasn't an alien symbiote, but Science Gone Awry, which is standard villain origin number one. I presume they'll do something like that for the film. I'd guess that Sandman is the rough draft, and Vemon the second version, since they both do cool morphing and such.
Yeah, I reckon Rick has it about right, they'll use some variation on the Ultimate storyline for Venom.
They set up two villians in the last movie, Jameson's kid (wasn't he man-wolf or something) and Hobgoblin and are going to use neither?
If you're gonna post this as news on your blog, you have to go defend me on the FT blog. The nerds have attacked because this was apparently "old news." I thought it was all speculation but never confirmed.
Also- my guess is Sandman will be the primary villain and "Venom" will just be getting started in his villainry and be the #1 baddie in S4. Either way, I love the casting.