It’s pretty wild that we live in a world where three Spider-Men have teamed up before Spidey and Venom. Though Tom Hardy turned for a post-credits cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home, he never got to share any scenes with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, or Andrew Garfield, or Tobey Maguire for that matter. But the potential is still there for Marvel and Sony to bring the spider and the symbiote together for a future project.
Someone who’s made clear from the beginning that they want to see this happen is director Ruben Fleischer, who kicked off the Venom franchise with Sony’s hit 2018 origins movie. Though he passed the baton to Andy Serkis for last year’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the door isn’t shut on Fleischer returning to the franchise.
While chatting with CinemaBlend, the Zombieland filmmaker revealed that it would be a “dream come true” to see Holland and Hardy share the screen, though he doesn’t know whether he will be the one to make that happen:
“We’ll have to see,” said Fleischer. “I mean, it would be honestly a dream come true to have those two worlds converge. It’ll be a formidable battle between those two characters, so… whether or not I direct it, I’ll certainly be excited to see it.”
Honestly, it’s a little unclear where things are headed. Eddie Brock found himself in the MCU’s reality at the end of Venom 2, which teased that he was there to stay. However, he was then sent right back to his own world, the Sonyverse, in NWH. That said, he did leave behind a drop of Venom, which suggests a totally different incarnation of the symbiote could rise up in the Marvel Studios franchise. So maybe the Spidey/Venom crossover we eventually get won’t feature Hardy. Though I think we can all agree that would be a big missed opportunity.
Fleischer would be the perfect person to helm an Eddie vs. Peter battle, though, seeing as he’s worked with Tom Holland on Sony’s upcoming Uncharted, in which the British actor stars as Nathan Drake. Watch out for that when it hits theaters Feb. 18.