When Sony Pictures announced plans for a Venom movie starring Tom Hardy, there was a lot of excitement among fans. Even with Tom Holland's Spider-Man being part of the MCU, there was hope that the two worlds might somehow connect to set up a future clash.
That all changed when fans sat down to watch the blockbuster. Hardy's madcap take on the Lethal Protector didn't work for comic book readers, and while Venom was a box office hit in 2018, it took a lot of liberties with the comics while creating a new origin story for Eddie Brock that didn't include Spider-Man.
Talking to The Playlist, filmmaker Ruben Fleischer admitted that bringing the character to the big screen without his origin story—or chest logo—was a big challenge at the time.
"That was the first real Spider-Man-affiliated movie," he recalled. "We were all trying to figure out exactly what that wants to be. 'Venom' was always defined by Spider-Man—our movie couldn’t feature Spider-Man. So it created an interesting challenge."
"From my memory of it, granted it was a while ago, but from my memory of it, it was always distinct from Spider-Man," Fleischer added, confirming that the movie wasn't made with an eventual crossover in mind. "Maybe there was the possibility of them crossing paths down the road, but inherent to ours was that it couldn’t be defined by that."
"It’s funny because in the comics, Venom has a spider on his chest, and that’s because he derives from Spider-Man. We had to come up with a whole new origin story and actually create a different pattern on his chest, unique for the film, because it wouldn’t have made sense if he had a spider on his chest if he had no affiliation with Spider-Man," he added, sharing that "it all worked out the way it was supposed to," given the franchise's eventual financial success.
Sony did start teasing the idea of a meeting between Spider-Man and Venom in 2021. At the end of Venom: The Last Dance, Eddie was transported into the MCU, where his alien symbiote took great interest in a news report about Spidey.
Despite that, Venom was not among the villains who battled the web-slinger at the Statue of Liberty and was sent back home in a post-credits scene. Venom: The Last Dance teased Knull as a possible Multiversal threat, but also ended Hardy's time as the character for what looked like a planned Agent Venom movie. Like the other Sony spin-offs, that's no longer moving forward.
Peter Parker will return in Spider-Man: Brand New Day next summer, where he's set to battle The Scorpion. The prevailing theory is that Mac Gargan could be the next Venom after Spidey brings the alien suit back with him from Battleworld in Avengers: Secret Wars.
Are you disappointed that we never got a Spider-Man/Venom crossover?