With a worldwide box office of $853 million, and counting, Sony's Venom may be the unlikeliest hit of the year. A Spider-Man spinoff that doesn't actually feature Spider-Man, the film ricocheted between body horror, slapstick comedy and, yes, romance, spawning countless memes and fanfics, and cemented the studio's ambitious plans for a sequel and a shared cinematic universe.

On paper, Venom probably shouldn't have worked, let alone succeed like it did, outperforming every installment Fox's X-Men franchise, even as it continues its theatrical run. But producer Amy Pascal thinks she knows precisely when the film reconciled its disparate elements, and resonated with audiences.

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“When he gets in the tub with all those lobsters in the restaurant," Pascal, the former head of Sony Pictures, told Vanity Fair, "I thought that was a pretty perfect, zany tone.”

Venom

The magazine points to the film's post-credits scene, which teases the arrival of Carnage, and the marketing for the home-video release, which includes a trailer reframing the story as a holiday romcom, as indications that Sony knows it can, and should, lean into that zaniness for the inevitable sequel.

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That's a long way from pre-release hand-wringing by Venom's core audience -- comic book fans -- about the film's PG-13 rating. The commercial success of the film would certainly seem to indicate that Venom doesn't need an R rating, or the bloody violence that would come with it -- just the right amount of craziness.

Arriving Tuesday on Blu-ray, director Ruben Fleischer's Venom stars Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, Reid Scott, Jenny Slate, Woody Harrelson, Sope Aluko, Scott Deckert, Marcella Bragio and Michelle Lee.