Although it was never officially pegged as an R-rated adaptation, executives at Sony and even director Ruben Fleischer spoke as if Venom would be something in the vein of a John Carpenter film, citing his body horror The Thing as an example.

While the final design to make it to the big screen was awesome (see above), it’s fun to see what could have been.  Concept designer Jared Krichevsky shared an early design he did for the Spider-Man spinoff and it’s nothing short of phenomenal.

What you see below is most definitely a more terrifying version of Venom, which would have bode well in an R-rated adaptation. Reminding me of Erik Larsen‘s evolution of Todd McFarlane‘s antihero, I’m hoping that maybe the design for Carnage, who will be the antagonist in Venom 2, will take a more sinister approach such as this. What do you think?

Here’s a design I did for Venom early in development. The movie was some good silly fun. #venom #tomhardy pic.twitter.com/GSaR52uTzM

— Jared Krichevsky (@Monstermash042) February 15, 2019