The word around the campfire today is that Sony is developing a Venom movie as a Spider-Man 3 spinoff. Venom, who was played by Topher Grace and was such an interesting part of Spider-Man 3 that I didn’t even remember it, actually died in the movie. But that hardly matters. As Rob Lowe’s character says in Thank You for Smoking, “So what? That’s one line of dialog. ‘Thank god we invented the… you know, whatever device.’”
Gary Ross [Pleasantville, Seabiscuit] is writing “Venom” as a potential directing vehicle. Ross is already writing “Spider-Man 4” for the studio. In the comics, Venom is a gooey alien parasite that bonds with Peter Parker and later his newsroom rival, among other people, becoming one of more popular villains in “Spider-Man’s” rogue gallery. Topher Grace portrayed the character in the 2007 movie, which ended with both the human and the alien symbiote apparently destroyed in an explosion. [Variety]
So… am I supposed to be more or less excited about this than about Spider-Man 4? Because I gotta tell you, I’m feelin pretty shrugswardly about both of them. And I should be the target audience. I’m not even the kind of guy who (*air quotes*) had sex with (*air quotes*) girls in (*air quotes*) high school.
Tobey Maguire will star in The Crusaders, a film not about righteously slaughtering Muslims, but rather the landmark 1954 supreme court decision Brown vs. Board of Education. Seabiscuit-Pleasantville director Gary Ross will direct a script by Recount’s Danny Strong.
Maguire would play Jack Greenberg, who, as an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school, joined with NAACP Legal Defense Fund head and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to win a Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in American schools illegal. …The project [will be] based on Greenberg’s memoirs "Crusader in the Courts." [Variety]
The Supreme Court’s decision desegregated public schools, paving the way for an education system whose quality and egalitarianism even today are the envy of countries all over the former Yugoslavia. In any case, I figure you have to be a pretty humble guy to name your memoir "Crusader in the Courts". Coincidentally, the memoirs of yours truly will be hitting bookshelves any day now. Keep a lookout for Rhinoceros on the Toilet, available wherever fine memoirs are sold.
