Written by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub 

A few weeks ago I was on the set of “Zombieland”. While I’m under embargo for saying anything more than that, I can say that while there, I was able to talk with writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and they talked about their take on Sony’s upcoming “Venom” movie – which they wrote.

According to the Paul and Rhett, Sony gave them a bunch of rules when writing the script, but they were still able to write the way they wanted to.

The other bit of news they discussed was “Earth vs. Moon” – which is an original idea that they called "a science-fiction epic war movie”.

According to Reese, “it’s a colony on the moon. And the colony on the moon is fighting Earth. We’re very, very excited about it. And we’ve also turned in a draft on that and are waiting to hear back, so we’re in early stages on each of those.”

Here’s exactly what was discussed during the roundtable interview:

Question: I could be mistaken, but I think you’re attached to something else that you may be writing that might be of interest to fandom.

Rhett Reese: I wonder what that might be.

Paul Wernick: Is it that animated project we’re doing?

Rhett Reese: No, Venom is something that we’re very fired up to be writing. We have turned in a draft and are waiting to hear back, so it’s early in the process. But it’s a thrill to be writing Venom for obvious reasons.

Q: Did you go in and pitch your take on what this film would be?

Paul Wernick: We sure did.

Q: And the studio was obviously very happy with it.

Rhett Reese: They liked it, yeah. We have to be much more tight-lipped about that one unfortunately. Yet that’s probably what everyone would prefer to hear about.

Q: I’m not looking for specifics on story or anything. I’m just curious about how, did they say to you we’re trying to do this a certain way? Or you just sort of wrote the script you wanted to write?

Rhett Reese: Well, we had certain parameters.

Paul Wernick: They had their 47 rules…

Rhett Reese: I mean, they had parameters for sure. I mean, obviously with a character like Venom there’s a ton of stuff to draw from. Then they had specific rules about, you know, the villain and the backstory and stuff like that, so there were certain things they wanted us… certain parameters they gave us. But largely we pitched them something and they liked it but they had changes, and so we worked on the outline for a long time and then we wrote the script. So it’s definitely a collaborative, with Marvel and Sony and us it’s very, very collaborative.

Q: Are you guys going to just ignore everything that happened in Spider-Man 3 and start fresh?

Rhett Reese: We can’t talk about that. Again, that starts to get into story which we’re not supposed to discuss.

Paul Wernick: Sorry.

Q: So let’s talk about other things you might be writing. Is there other stuff you’re doing?

Rhett Reese: We are, we are. We sold a project to Universal called Earth vs. Moon which is an idea that we had. It’s a science-fiction epic war movie ala, I don’t know, Braveheart or, uh… whatever things can we compare it to. It’s sort of got a little Star Wars in it, a little Braveheart, a little 300 in it. It’s like it’s sort of exactly what the title suggests. It’s big and crazy and, I mean, it’s gonna be awesome.

Q: Who’s fighting for the moon though?

Rhett Reese: It’s a colony on the moon. And the colony on the moon is fighting Earth. We’re very, very excited about it. And we’ve also turned in a draft on that and are waiting to hear back, so we’re in early stages on each of those.