In the past week, it's been revealed that Sony's plans for a Venom movie, to spin-off from the main Spider-Man franchise, had been moving forward. Things had accelerated with the appointment of Gary Ross to write and potentially direct a Venom film, and the assumption was that Ross would move on to Venom once he was finished with Spider-Man rewrites for Sam Raimi.

Only it now appears that that isn't the case.

For it now seems that Ross is first committed to another project, specifically the long-mooted Matt Helm movie. Matt Helm had given Dean Martin a movie role in the 60s, but the plan is to bring the character up to date with a brand new film.

It's a film that Ross is attached to as well, and with the Matt Helm shoot scheduled for the summer of 2010, that has an inevitable knock on effect for Venom. While it was unlikely that Sony would want a Venom movie any earlier than 2012, to avoid a clash with Spidey 4, we could now more realistically be looking at the summer of 2013 before Venom reappears on the big screen.

As always, we'll keep you posted.