At this stage, everybody knows we’re going to see Tom Hardy’s Venom share the screen with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. It’s clearly been the plan since the very beginning, with Sony even establishing their own shared superhero series that runs parallel to Kevin Feige’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.
If No Way Home can utilize Sony-owned Spidey characters, then seeing the MCU’s web-slinger drop by a mythology that’s literally got his name in the title is inevitable. The most recent spate of rumors have claimed that the first meeting of the comic book rivals could happen sooner than you might think, but in a new interview with IGN, Venom: Let There Be Carnage director Andy Serkis explained why he’s in no rush to get there.
“Look, it depends when you want to get there and also what the appetite is. If people want more Venom stories, then to jump straight to Spider-Man, you could be missing out on so many great supervillain characters between now and then. Point taken, yes, everybody wants to see Venom fight Spider-Man. So I think, again, it’s appetite, they’ll be sacrificing all of that stuff if they want to rush to that.”
He’s got a point; the last time Venom was stuffed into a project just for the hell of it, we ended up with Topher Grace in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. Fan service is all well and good, and it’s a large part of what the MCU thrives on, but Sony’s track record is less than stellar. Not only was Holland the third live-action Spider-Man in the space of fourteen years, but previous plans to build an interconnected set of blockbusters out from Queens’ finest imploded at the first hurdle.
Patience is both a virtue and something Hollywood executives don’t possess in abundance, but if we give Venom some time to breathe as the star of his own franchise first, then the first interaction he has with Holland’s Spider-Man is going to be all the more impactful.
