The Real Reason Venom Soared While Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter Flopped

Sony tried to spin up a Marvel-style universe out of Spider-Man villains without, you know, Spider-Man. That went about as well as you remember: Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter faceplanted with critics and at the box office. In the middle of that chaos, one thing actually worked: Venom. Critics rolled their eyes, audiences bought tickets, and the trilogy quietly hauled in $1.8 billion worldwide. So why did Venom connect when the others crashed?

The Playlist put that question to Ruben Fleischer, who directed the first Venom. He was careful not to Monday-morning-quarterback the other movies — he says he has not seen all of them — but he did lay out why Venom clicked for him: it is funny, it does not take itself too seriously, and it leans into the absurdity of a journalist sharing headspace with a hungry alien.

'People love Venom because he is funny. It does not take itself too seriously. It is kind of a ridiculous premise that you have an alien living inside you and sharing space with you.'

Fleischer said he leaned into a specific tonal lane that is not the usual superhero playbook. His touchstones were 'All of Me' (yes, the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin body-sharing comedy) and 'An American Werewolf in London.' Both are genre pieces with a mischievous sense of humor baked in. That mix let Venom look and feel darker than most capes-and-cowls stuff while still being genuinely funny — and Tom Hardy ran with it. According to Fleischer, Hardy nailed the odd-couple chaos, and the combined charisma of Hardy and the character itself did a lot of the heavy lifting with audiences.

There was another, very real hurdle: Sony could not use Spider-Man. That forced Fleischer and the team to build a Venom who was not defined by Peter Parker. As he remembers it, that was the point from the start — keep Venom distinct, maybe leave the door open to cross paths one day, but do not hang the whole thing on a hero they did not have.

• Why Venom worked, per Fleischer: a knowingly ridiculous premise played for dark comedy; tonal inspiration from 'All of Me' and 'An American Werewolf in London'; a character who looks mean but cracks jokes; Tom Hardy’s full-send performance; and a story that stands on its own without Spider-Man, even while acknowledging a crossover could happen down the line.

Compare that to Sony’s other Spider-villain swings — characters with less built-in mainstream love, movies that treated bonkers concepts with a straight face, and none of Hardy’s go-for-broke energy — and it is not shocking why audiences chose one over the others. Venom did not chase prestige; it embraced the weird and gave people a good time. The others? The results speak for themselves.