Give Up Hope: Kevin Feige Confirms No Plans To Make Venom Part Of The MCU
Earlier today, Spider-Man star Tom Holland confirmed that two more Spidey sequels are in the works, and I'm sure speculation has already begun about which villains the ol' webhead might end up facing off against in the years to come. But there's one character it seems like fans can safely take off the table: the alien symbiote Venom.
In a new interview, Marvel mega-producer and creative guru Kevin Feige explains why Venom won't be in a Marvel Studios anytime soon. Hit the jump to learn what Feige said about the Venom MCU possibilities.
Around the 10:00 mark during a Facebook Live interview with French website AlloCiné, Feige was asked whether we'd ever see Venom appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His response was swift and simple: "No plans to include [Venom] in the MCU right now. That is Sony's project."
That's not surprising, considering Sony is developing a Venom movie starring Tom Hardy that will kick off their own cinematic universe next year featuring Spider-Man characters they still hold the licensing rights to outright. Venom will be followed by a Silver Sable/Black Cat team-up movie called Silver & Black, which is rumored to serve as a launchpad for an all-female Avengers-style team of heroes. Since the deal that's currently in place that allows the character of Spider-Man to flow between studios is temporary, it doesn't make much sense for Sony to preemptively send Marvel another one of their other major assets without anything in return.
I suppose fans who are still hoping that Holland's Spider-Man could eventually face off against Hardy's Venom might, in the quest to find a silver lining here, point out that Feige didn't specifically nix the idea of those two incarnations of the characters ever meeting. Technically, he said Venom wouldn't show up in the MCU, but he never said that Holland's version of Spider-Man couldn't appear in Sony's shared universe. That outcome seems far more plausible to me than the reverse, because wouldn't it be nuts for Sony to build an entire cinematic universe around Spider-Man characters but never plan to actually include the webslinger himself in that universe?
It remains to be seen exactly what Sony's plans are for this new series of movies, but they have to keep the average moviegoer in mind when planning this stuff out. People who read /Film might be able to tell the difference between these cinematic universes, but I doubt the normals will be able to keep it all straight. What do you think?