Marvel Studios may have consolidated their grip on the comic book genre after recently acquiring the rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool as a result of Disney’s Fox takeover, but you can guarantee that it remains a huge bone of contention among the higher-ups that they have to share Spider-Man with Sony.
Not only that, but the rival studio are taking full advantage of the characters at their disposal by launching the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, with part of the new Spider-Man deal making it increasingly likely that Tom Holland is now contractually obligated to swing by at some point in the future.
While the specifics of the new contract haven’t been made public, the big reveal of Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes at the end of the first Morbius trailer would seem to indicate that the crossover between the MCU and the SPUoMC will extend a lot further than just Spider-Man. This had led to renewed hope that Tom Hardy’s Venom could eventually cross paths with some of the Marvel Studios characters, and we’ve now heard that the symbiote could be set to show up in the most unlikely of places.
According to our intel – which comes from the same sources that told us Ahsoka Tano would be appearing in the second season of The Mandalorian and that Marvel is rebooting the Inhumans, both of which we now know to be true – the Venom symbiote is currently penciled in for a cameo appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
Star-Lord and his crew will reportedly take a trip to Klyntar, the artificially-created planet where the symbiotes hail from, and the scene in question will feature a brief glimpse of Venom in its original form before it travels to Earth, which means that at least some of Vol. 3 will take place before Sony’s 2018 box office smash. Though we’re told that the film will quickly jump forward to the present day.
Although things can always change as the project continues to develop, this idea is apparently in the current draft of the script and it would certainly be a smart way of teasing Tom Hardy’s eventual appearance in the MCU by establishing that Venom exists in Marvel’s shared universe without being forced to rely too heavily on the events that are happening over at Sony, or even mention Eddie Brock at all.