Venom Had An Interesting Marketing Campaign In China
Even if you thought that 2018’s Venom was loud, dumb, badly written, had terrible CGI and was complete nonsense from the start, you can’t deny that it was at least different to every other superhero movie out there. Despite terrible critic reviews, Venom still went on to rake in a whopping $822 million (and counting) at the worldwide box office. What’s interesting is that $611 million of that actually came from overseas markets and $211 million came from the U.S. This makes Venom (somehow) the highest grossing superhero origin story movie of all time, beating even Wonder Woman, Batman, Iron Man, and Spider-Man.
Like many big-budget action movies, Venom was a huge hit in China, but while we don’t know exactly why it has been such a success there, we really hope it has something to do with the unique marketing campaign which sprung up from seemingly nowhere. Sony’s Chinese marketing team apparently went with the direction of what a great boyfriend Venom would make, rather than his gruesome look or man-eating capabilities.
As you can see, the cartoon adverts display the uses which a Venom boyfriend would make, such as carrying a load of shopping bags, taking perfect selfies, holding an umbrella and simply keeping you safe on the underground train network. In the actual Venom movie, the character obviously displays none of these tendencies, and although he is deep down a nice guy, he isn’t that nice. Furthermore, other video adverts focus less on Venom’s skull-crushing abilities and more on the “bromance” between Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock character and the symbiote from space – a match made in heaven, if you ask us.
Elsewhere in the world, things are no less weird, as even in the States, Venom randomly appears as a mascot in an advert made with ESPN. Also, if you see Venom flying, it’s not a new ability he just learnt, but it would probably be a 1950s French military Broussard plane with a new paint job. The plane is owned by British watch manufacturers, Bremont, and was redesigned in black, complete with snarling teeth and that long tongue belonging to Venom. As Tom Hardy is himself a big fan of the brand, his character wore a Bremont U-2/51-JET watch throughout the film, which you might be able to find here if you’re lucky.
Due to the box office success of Venom, a sequel is certainly on the way at some point, but what is less certain is if we’ll see this version of Venom tied into the MCU. It certainly worked for a Sony/Marvel relationship with Spider-Man (Sony owns the rights to the character and essentially “lent” Marvel the use of him for six movies), so if Marvel thinks this Tom Hardy version could fit in the MCU, then maybe we’ll see him ripping off heads alongside The Hulk one day.
