Latest Report on ‘Venom’ Confirms the Film isn’t Part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
A short new Entertainment Weekly preview for Venom, released just ahead of next weekend’s San Diego Comic Con, pretty much confirms that the movie will not have any ties to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, much less Tom Holland’s iteration of Spider-Man.
Firstly, here’s a new image of Venom in all his toothy glory so you can have some fresh new nightmares:
This definitely looks better than the version that was shown in Spider-Man 3. Now, on to the real details. One thing fans might notice is that the characters signature white spider-insignia plastered on his chest isn’t present, which makes sense considering that this iteration of the character doesn’t have anything to do with Spider-Man (who, in most adaptations, wore the Symbiote before rejecting it, at which point it attached itself to a suicidal Eddie Brock). But fans have still speculated that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man might show up in the film, even if it’s only in a cameo appearance. The most recent report from Entertainment Weekly puts that line of speculation to rest with a pretty definitive statement:
“Venom is the first of Sony’s new films based on characters from the Spider-Man comics, although it’s a separate world from last year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. It’s also not part of the deal between Sony and Disney that allows Tom Holland’s Spidey into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.”
As it was initially revealed in the announcement of Sony and Marvel Studios having a partnership back in early 2015, Sony would reserve the right to make unrelated spin-offs to whatever Marvel Studios wanted to do with Spider-Man as a character, since they still own the Spider-Man franchise rights. As such, it has become clear that Venom would be the first of those movies, which, if successful, may be the launching point of Sony’s own plans for a shared universe of Spider-Man antagonists that Marvel Studios don’t have any immediate plans for (with characters like Morbius, Silver Sable, and Black Cat looking to get adaptations of their own). Meanwhile, Sony is also doing a standalone animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which stars the Miles Morales version of the character going into alternate realms that contain different versions of the webslinger, including an alternate version of Peter Parker himself.
Other information of note is that Tom Hardy chose to play a superhero (for a loose interpretation of the definition of a “hero”, here) because he was interested in the idea after playing someone like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and it’s a character that his son is a fan of. The movie is being approached as being similar in nature to a werewolf movie or a Jekyll and Hyde story, with the twist being that both consciousnesses of the character operate at the same time – indeed, forming a truly symbiotic relationship between the two characters by way of a David Cronenberg body horror movie. And from the sound of things, the movie will feature Venom’s cannibalism playing into the movie, which lends credence to the idea that the film will be R-rated after all (though there’s no explicit confirmation that this is what they’re going for just yet).
Venom will be released on October 5, 2018.
Grant Davis is a freelance writer who has covered entertainment news for more than seven years. His articles have frequently appeared in Star Wars News Net as well as as other entertainment-related websites. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and comic book movies, he’s completely thrilled with the current era of genre entertainment.
