Most of us are operating under the assumption that one of the major reasons Sony agreed to extend their working relationship with Marvel Studios, despite initially pulling Tom Holland out of Kevin Feige’s franchise to the shock and fury of fans everywhere, was that the actor would be contractually obliged to show up in the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters.
The unlikely partnership between the two studios only looks to have strengthened now that Sony have agreed a lucrative streaming deal with Disney that’ll see vast swathes of the company’s back catalogue added to either the Hulu or Disney Plus libraries, with the MCU’s Spider-Man movies obviously the big gets once they finish up their initial runs on Netflix.
Throughout it all, we’ve been hearing countless rumors that Holland will be swinging by Venom: Let There Be Carnage or that Tom Hardy will be showing up in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but neither feels likely to happen at this stage. However, a crossover is something that audiences would love to see, and in a new interview, Sony Motion Picture Group president Sanford Panitch was hardly subtle when it came to intimating that he’s definitely got something in mind.
“There actually is a plan. I think now maybe it’s getting a little more clear for people where we’re headed and I think when No Way Home comes out, even more will be revealed. The great thing is we have this very excellent relationship with Kevin. There’s an incredible sandbox there to play with. We want those MCU movies to be absolutely huge, because that’s great for us and our Marvel characters, and I think that’s the same thing on their side. But we have a great relationship. There’s lots of opportunities, I think, that are going to happen.”
Michael Keaton’s cameo in Morbius only creates more questions about which characters are going to show up where and how the MCU and SPUMC are connected, especially with No Way Home rumored to be bringing back familiar faces from two decades in the past, but fans won’t mind how convoluted the mythology ends up getting as long as Toms Hardy and Holland get to interact with each other in a moment between Spider-Man and Venom in live-action that will comfortably banish Sam Raimi’s overcooked yet still half-baked symbiotic subplot to the history books.