Rumor: Sony Wants Tom Hardy’s Venom in Spider-Man 3, Not Deadpool

A Marvel insider claims Sony Pictures is trying to include Tom Hardy’s Venom in the third Marvel Studios-produced Spider-Man film, disputing a report from days ago that claimed Disney-owned Marvel was considering introducing Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool in Spider-Man 3.

Twitter account @RogerWardell, who in December leaked major Avengers: Endgame spoilers that were ultimately revealed to be legitimate months later, says there are “no plans” for Deadpool in Spider-Man 3 and Sony instead “desperately” wants Hardy’s Venom opposite Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.

Wardell further claims Disney-owned Marvel Studios will keep the Deadpool franchise, acquired as part of Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets in March, running parallel to its other properties.

The May 24 rumor from MCU Cosmic claimed Marvel was mulling over multiple options to introduce the Merc with a Mouth: a third Reynolds-led solo movie, a live-action series on Disney+, or involvement in the Spider-Man: Far From Home sequel, which pairs Holland’s wall-crawler with veteran super-spy Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) played support in its predecessor, 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Sony controls Spider-Man’s live-action screen rights and allows the character to operate in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the teen superhero was knighted as a member of Earth’s mightiest heroes in Avengers: Infinity War before helping save the universe in Avengers: Endgame.

Venom launched Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters, an unconnected and apparently Spidey-less continuity.

Amy Pascal, who serves as producer on both Venom and the rebooted Spider-Man franchise, once said the Sony-produced films would act as tie-ins for the MCU, telling FilmStarts in June 2017 the films “will now take place in the world that we are creating for Peter Parker.”

“They’ll be adjuncts to it, they may be different locations, but it will still all be in the same world,” Pascal said. “And they will be connected to each other as well.”

Though Pascal tried, perhaps mistakenly, to characterize the SUMC as an offshoot of the MCU, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige later told AlloCine there is “no plan” for Venom in the MCU, calling the Hardy movie “a Sony project.”

Pascal later clarified her comments when speaking to ComicBook.com during the Spider-Man: Homecoming press tour, explaining “all these characters are a part of the Marvel comic book universe.”

“In that universe, they are all related to each other. Kevin makes characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” she said. “These characters are separate, except for Spidey, who belongs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is why he's there.”

Asked if that rules out a future Spider-Man and Venom crossover, Feige said, “We never say never.” Feige added a merger between the two universes was unlikely to happen “any time soon.”

But Venom producer Matt Tolmach believes such a crossover will come “at some point.”

“The obvious thing that we are all excited to do is have Venom face off against Spider-Man at some point... we knew we couldn’t use Spider-Man in this movie or didn’t want to use him in this movie,” Tolmach told LRM.

“But we were all really excited about the potential for Spider-Man and Venom at some point in the future meeting up.”

Far From Home will seemingly delve deeper into the concept of the Multiverse, potentially allowing for a future Spider-Man-Venom crossover.

“We had to look at it in terms of the scope of what happened at the end of Endgame. Seeing all the crazy things that they did and all the questions that raises,” director Jon Watts told Fandango.

“So we’re definitely trying to answer one of the big ones — alternate timelines. So many possibilities opened up at the end of Endgame, and Peter Parker is one of the few people on the ground dealing with them.”

When asked how Far From Home differs from Sony’s animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — which saw multiple Spider-people crossover into one shared reality — Watts said, “I wouldn’t dare [explain]. I’ll let Nick Fury do that.”

Spider-Man: Far From Home opens July 2. Sony has dated Venom 2 for October 2, 2020.

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