First off, you know that movie studios intentionally "leak" shit like this to the fan sites right before they announce it to the mainstream, right? For the record, I like a lot of what Knowles does on his site. I also think he tries way too hard to be a "player." He doesn't need to. Harry is his own sort of inside/outside Hollywood beast and he should revel in that because it's a rare thing to in essence be nobody and yet yield such a cultural sway over the magic makers.
I could go off on a long rant on how Ain't-It-Cool-News is at once part of the problem and the solution with Hollywood and it's endless fascination with dreck, but it's really not that interesting of a debate.
That said, Harry Knowles is probably speaking truthfully when he said his "people" at Sony told him that it's the "legendary black costume" in the poster.
On the black costume, (GEEK ALERT): Back in the early 80s, Spider-Man and all the other Marvel super-heroes got whisked away to an alien planet so Marvel could cash in on huge crossover called "Secret Wars." (Okay, their motives weren't completely financial, and it was a pretty friggin' cool story. Think Escape from New York meets MechWarriors.)
Anywho... while there, Spidey's red and blue costume gets ripped to shreds. he goes to this glowing black ball thinking it's going to repair his costume. The black ball oozes over him, (kind of like the blob) and instead of being his red and blue, becomes the "legendary black costume," all black with big white eyes and a big white spider on the chest.
See, Secret Wars was Marvel's way of taking care of flagging sales. They "reimagined" a few of the characters by kind of shifting away from the status quo; The Thing could change back and forth from human to rocky, the Hulk got smart, and Spider-Man got a new costume.
So, Spidey gets back to earth and he can change his clothes by thinking about it, and life is grand as he kicks ass and takes names. Only thing is he's friggin' tired all the time because the costume is taking control of him while he sleeps and takes him out doing shit. Turns out the costume is an "alien symbiote" which is trying to meld with Spidey and take over his body.
Spidey finds out the alien's weakness is sound and goes up into a church tower where the bells SEEM to blast it apart. Only the alien survived, and bonded up with this whack-o Catholic who thinks Spider-Man ruined his life. He joins up with the symbiote to become the villain, Venom, who looks like Spider-Man's black costume except is has a big gaping maw like one of the creatures from the Alien movies.
Sound kind of stupid? It is really, though Venom is super popular in the comic book realm, so it's a no-brainer that they're pulling him into the movies.
I'll dig up some pictures.
