Production is currently underway on Sony’sVenommovie starringTom Hardy. Fans wondered how you could have Venom without Spider-Man, who is kind of the progenitor of the character in the comics. The whole reason Venom has Spider-Man-like powers is because the alien symbiote went to Peter Parker first and when Peter rejected the symbiote, it found Eddie Brock, thus creating a darker, more muscular, and drool-ier version of Spider-Man. But we heard repeatedly,especially out of theSpider-Man: Homecomingjunket, that the new Spider-Man playedby Tom Hollandexists in a separate universethan Venom and all the other Spidey spinoffs Sony has in the works.
Today onMovie Talk, Jon Schnepp said he heard a very different story and that Holland’s Spider-Man will in fact be in Venom:
“Spider-Man is going to be in Venom. For the last couple of months, we’ve been hearing how Sony is keeping it all separated, and Spider-Man is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but every other character that’s in the Spider-Man universe is separate. All I’m saying is that Spider-Man—and I’m talking about Tom Holland’s Spider-Man—is going to be in Venom.”
Holland along with producersKevin FeigeandAmy Pascalboth said that Spider-Man wouldn’t appear in Venom, and that it wouldn’t even be a cameo role. And when you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Think of all the complications that arise once you say Spider-Man and Venom exist in the same universe. For starters, Venom is going to be Rated-R, so now Disney has the Spider-Man character appearing in an R-rated movie. Secondly, every future MCU movie featuring Spider-Man now carries the burden of, “Where’s Venom?” So now you’re saddling your futureSpider-Manmovies with Venom stuff even though Feige and Co. aren’t involved with the making of those Venom movies.
It just doesn’t really add up. I could see, at best, a mention of Spider-Man or maybe a costumed Spider-Man where the costume design is different enough fromHomecomingthat there’s no confusion, but to firmly put Tom Holland into Venom just opens a can of worms that both Sony and Disney probably don’t want to deal with.
We’ll find out if this rumor turns out to be true whenVenomopens on October 5th.
