Sony certainly seems to be carving out new franchises for Spider-Man that exist on the outskirts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse became a surprise animated hit of 2018 that it would win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and has two more films on the way. Even the flop that is Morbius seems to have drawn enough meme attention that Sony seems to be moving forward with a sequel. Arguably their most successful non-MCU-ish film series to date has been Venom with star Tom Hardy.
While Venom is traditionally a villain who fights Spider-Man, he occupied his own feature film in 2018 with Tom Hardy playing Eddie Brock, the journalist who becomes the host body for the violent alien Venom. Despite a low critical response, the quirkiness of the picture led to a sequel in 2021, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which garnered higher praise and solid box office. So Venom 3 seems like a no-brainer for Sony.
However, Venom 3 will not only once more star Tom Hardy in the lead role but he’ll be taking part in the writing as well. ComicBook.com has confirmed that the Venom star will be co-writing the script alongside Kelly Marcel, who wrote the last two Venom movies. Hardy confirmed this piece of news on his social media account.
This has been something in the works for quite some time. Back in August, Hardy expressed interest in new ideas for the next Venom movie:
“I would be remiss if I wasn’t trying to steer any kind of connectivity. I wouldn’t be doing the job if I wasn’t awake and open to any opportunity or eventuality or be excited by that. Obviously, that’s a large canyon to leap, to be bridged by one person alone, and it would take a much higher level of diplomacy and intelligence, sitting down and talking, to take on an arena such as that. Should both sides be willing, and it be beneficial to both sides, I don’t see why it couldn’t be. I hope and strongly, with both hands, push, eagerly, towards that potential, and would do anything to make that happen, within what’s right in business. But it would be foolish not to head towards the Olympic Games if you were running 100 meters, so yeah! I want to play on that field.”
In December, Venom: Let There Be Carnage director Andy Serkis also highlighted how much both Marcel and Hardy had ideas for more movies:
“There’s so much potential in the Venomverse for really interesting journeys before the kind of the inevitable happens. I think Kelly and Tom have been thinking about what is the next stage of the journey anyway. They would have thought of… They would have had some plans for where they could possibly go after this… You’ve got to. When you’re going into a franchise, you’ve got to think about the arc, of course. You can’t think about them just individually.”
Venom has certainly been one of Sony’s biggest Marvel properties that didn’t require much of any sharing of the revenue with Disney. The biggest involvement that the anti-hero has had occurred for the post-credit scene of Venom: Let There Be Carnage when Eddie and Venom were mysteriously transported in the MCU timeline. Their stay would only be relegated to a brief post-credit scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home before returning to their own dimension.
