While the rest of the world was wondering how Sony could ever make a good movie about Venom without Spider-Man’s involvement, the studio was busy cooking up the most erotic, disturbing romantic comedy of the year, and it would like to remind you of this very important fact. No, really.
After months of putting out a bunch of weird Venom advertisements that didn’t exactly make it seem as if the movie was going to be very fun, Sony realised that audiences were picking up on (and more importantly, liking) Venom’s sexual undertones, and decided to lean all the way into them. The studio’s seemingly kept that in mind in the days leading up to the movie’s digital and Blu-ray releases with a new rom-com ad highlighting, well, the unabashed love that Eddie Brock and the Symbiote have for one another.
It’s rare to see a studio manage to get on top of a so-so ad campaign, pick up on the public’s reaction to a movie, and then ride the meme wave to millions of dollars at the box office—and yet that’s exactly what Sony’s done. What remains to be seen is if the studio can catch this kind of lightning in a bottle the second time around.