Despite striking a deal with Marvel Studios for Spider-Man: Homecoming (and its subsequent sequels), Sony Pictures is looking to put its Spidey rights to further use, having announced the spinoff movies Venom and Silver & Black, the latter featuring the characters of Silver Sable and Black Cat.
Given that Tom Holland’s wall-crawler exists within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there has been some question as to the status of these other projects. Most have assumed they’ll be separate, and now that is official as Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has told AlloCine that: “For now, there is no plan for Venom in the MCU. It’s a Sony project.”
While that is one question answered, Feige’s response raises several more: How will Sony handle Venom’s origin without Spider-Man? Does Holland’s Spider-Man exist in both universes? If not, will we be getting two concurrent Spider-Men? If those rumours about supporting characters in Silver & Black are true, does that mean all of those are off limits to the MCU? And if so, how does Marvel feel about that?!
Venom is being directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), with Tom Hardy starring in the title role. It is set for release on October 5th 2018.
Originally published June 14, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
