2018’s Venom may have disappointed critics but audiences loved it. The film grossed $856 million at the box office, making that teaser scene featuring Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady/Carnage certain to lead to a sequel. But for a while, things went quiet on Venom 2. In retrospect, this may have been a result of behind-the-scenes negotiations on the future of Spider-Man in the MCU. The eventual conclusion of those negotiations should mean good things for Spidey fans though, with the character confirmed to return to the MCU as well as most likely facing off against Tom Hardy’s Venom and/or Woody Harrelson’s Carnage.
Now, in a new interview, Venom producer Matt Tolmach has been grilled about what exactly they have in store for everyone’s favorite web-slinger, and here’s what he teased:
“We have big plans.”
I mean, we already knew that, so this isn’t terribly surprising to hear. What about some hint that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man might be cameoing in Venom 2, or that Venom might be retroactively considered an MCU movie? Give us something to work with here, Matt!
My bet is that we will eventually see Tom Holland’s Spider-Man appearing, most likely being a major part of Venom 3. While the upcoming sequel is expected to establish Carnage and Shriek, it’s rumored that they’ll adapt the classic 1990s comic book series Maximum Carnage for the film after that. This storyline featured Venom and Spider-Man teaming up to take down Carnage and a group of other supervillains that he referred to as his ‘family.’
Beyond that, it’s possible that Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters and the MCU may dovetail. I was initially skeptical that this could happen. After all, Venom ruled itself out of being a secret MCU movie by making the existence of aliens a shock to its characters, but I’ve seen it argued that they could say the film was set prior to the Battle of New York. In addition, J.K. Simmons is confirmed to be playing J. Jonah Jameson in both the MCU and in Sony’s Morbius, which indicates that at the very least they’re prepared to share something.
Hopefully we’ll get more concrete news out of Sony pretty soon. Watch this space.