If Tom Hardy has any say, Venom and Spider-Man will meet on the big screen.
Hardy spoke to Esquire about Venom: Let There Be Carnage and the future of Sony's corner of the Marvel Universe. While all signs point to the Venom movies and the upcoming Morbius not being set in Marvel Cinematic Universe, the MCU's multiverse allows for that to change at some point. And Hardy said he's doing everything he can to make sure it happens.
"I would be remiss if I wasn’t trying to steer any kind of connectivity," Hardy said. "I wouldn’t be doing the job if I wasn’t awake and open to any opportunity or eventuality or be excited by that. Obviously, that’s a large canyon to leap, to be bridged by one person alone, and it would take a much higher level of diplomacy and intelligence, sitting down and talking, to take on an arena such as that."
"Should both sides be willing, and it be beneficial to both sides, I don’t see why it couldn’t be," Hardy continued. "I hope and strongly, with both hands, push, eagerly, towards that potential, and would do anything to make that happen, within what’s right in business. But it would be foolish not to head towards the Olympic Games if you were running 100 meters, so yeah! I want to play on that field."
There have been Spider-Man Easter eggs in Venom's universe, but there's no word yet on if Hardy and Tom Holland's Peter Parker will ever share the screen. For now, Venom 2 director Andy Serkis has confirmed this year's film will not be set in the MCU.
"Obviously, there are links between Venom and Spider-Man and the Marvel Universe and the Spider-Man story," Serkis said earlier this year. "We're treating this very much as it's his own world. The Venom story is his own world. There are nods and little moments [like the shot of the newspaper the Daily Bugle], of course, but on the whole, he's unaware. They are unaware, at this point, of other characters like Spider-Man. So, that's the way we've chosen to play this particular episode of the movie, but, well, we'll wait and see. We'll see what little things you can pick out of it."
Venom's origin was changed to remove Spider-Man as an influence, but that doesn't mean the wall-crawler can't show up in the future and build a new connection between the characters in the MCU.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage, likely without Spider-Man, arrives in theaters Sept. 24.
Source: Esquire