If you’ve been a longtime fan of Venom, you might remember that the character’s original origin in the comic books was directly tied to Spider-Man. More specifically, Eddie Brock ended up merging with the alien symbiote which had originally bonded with Spidey (in “The Black Suit” arc, which lasted for roughly four years and ended with Spidey rejecting the alien symbiote in an intense and emotional scene atop a belltower). The symbiote, which formed a deep-seated resentment for Spidey as a result of being spurned, combined in a perfect storm of hatred and a desire for vengeance with Eddie Brock — who had formed a deep-seated resentment for Spidey’s alter-ego Pater Parker — to form Venom.
Venom serves as one of Spider-Man’s most iconic and dangerous archnemeses for myriad reasons: their shared appearance (Venom is like a more massive, musclebound and monstrous version of Spider-Man in the Black Suit), the two’s shared history and animosity, the fact that Spider-Man technically created Venom and the fact that Venom both shares Spider-Man’s powers (he can web-sling, crawl walls, has proportional Spider-Strength) and can negate his Spider-Sense.
So why haven’t we seen a Spider-Man vs. Venom movie with Tom Holland and Tom Hardy — a comic book movie with two characters who are enemies nearly as bitter as Batman and the Joker or Superman and Lex Luthor? Hardy, who played Eddie Brock/Venom in all three Venom movies revealed that the crossover got closer than we thought, but ultimately fell through due to studio politics.
“We got close,” the Oscar-nominated Hardy said in a recent episode of “The Discourse Podcast” with The Playlist. “We got as close as I could possibly imagine getting, apart from doing a film together, which I would have loved to have done because that just means so much fun.”
When “The Discourse Podcast” host Mike DeAngelo asked if studio politics ultimately killed the Spider-Man vs. Venom movie, Hardy agreed in roundabout fashion, stating that the movie never got off the ground “for all the reasons that you explained ultimately in there.”
Hardy explained that the biggest reason he wanted to go ahead with a Spider-Man vs. Venom movie with Tom Holland was primarily because of how much kids are enamored with the characters.
“Fundamentally, for me, it would be for the kids,” Hardy explained. “Because, you know, as much as adults love superhero films, as you can tell by the box office when they’re successful, I think I’m constantly reminded by children how important these characters are. And they don’t know why their favorite characters aren’t in films together.”
While the Venom movies weren’t the most critically acclaimed, the trilogy, which includes “Venom” (2018), “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (2021), and “Venom: The Last Dance” (2024) grossed a combined $1.5 billion worldwide against a combined production cost of $330 million.
Hardy said that he, the filmmakers and the cast were “privileged” to be able to make the Venom movies, movies which he sincerely enjoyed making and loved working on.
“We were given a set of boundaries, and we were just really privileged to be able to play with a much-beloved IP like Venom in a way that we were allowed to play,” Hardy said. “And in that [regard], we did what we could and what we loved doing. We poured all of ourselves into it within the limits of what we were allowed to do with him. And so the enjoyment of the work outweighed the limits of our possibilities with him because we just focused on what we were allowed to do. And we loved doing it.”
Ruben Fleischer, who directed the first Venom film, revealed to Fandom in 2019 that the plan with the Sony Venom movies was to eventually have them crossover with Tom Hardy’s Spider-Man.
“That’s where it’s all going to lead,” Fleischer said. “And that’s the exciting thing, because we changed the origin of Venom [for the first movie]. In the comics, he evolved from Spider-Man, but because of the Marvel-Sony thing, we weren’t able to do that. And so the thing I think it’s building towards, and will be exciting to see, is when they actually do confront each other.”
Are you disappointed that a Spider-Man vs. Venom movie with Tom Holland and Tom Hardy was close to being made but ultimately fell through due to studio politics? Would you still like to see the two movie characters face off against one another?
