This past week we’ve been talking a lot about Spider-Man’s journey coming to an end in the MCU. Disney and Sony had reached an impasse on their latest negotiations over the use of Spider-Man in big-screen feature films. As a result of the contractual deadlock, Kevin Feige would no longer serve as the creative head behind the solo Spidey movies and sadly, Spider-Man will no longer be a part of the MCU going forward. This has lead to plenty of speculations on the future of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man by fans and critics alike. Even we wrote a speculative piece on the various possible directions Tom Holland’s version of the web-slinger could swing including making its debut in Sony’s Venom universe.
Interestingly enough, it looks like Sony had already planned for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man to make an appearance in Ruben Fleischer’s Venom, starring Tom Hardy. On an episode of Collider Live, film pundit Jay Washington mentioned that Holland did, in fact, shoot a scene for Venom. However, Marvel Studios made Sony remove it from the film.
“I’ll tell you the truth: Tom Holland did film a scene for Venom… Marvel saw the movie and was like ‘Take him out. Take this scene out.’ Peter Parker was in Venom, not Spider-Man.”
Looking at how Venom turned out, I can’t blame Marvel for asking Sony to remove the scene. The Ruben Fleischer film was one of the most disappointing outings of 2018, messy and at times incomprehensible. The film was very poorly received by critics and currently has a terrible 29% on Rotten Tomatoes (average critic score: 4.4/10).
Having said that, critic opinions aside, the film was very, very well received by fans around the world, grossing over $US 800 million at the global box office — a staggering number, especially when you take its R-rating into account. Considering that Marvel Studios is now out of the picture (temporarily at least), I think there’s a very good chance that Sony reverts back to their original plan and incorporate Tom Holland’s version of Spider-Man into the established Venom universe.
