When Marvel and Sony announced that they had found a way to come to a deal to continue sharing Spider-Man in each of their movie universes, Kevin Feige’s statement in the press release included this interesting note. Spider-Man, he wrote, “also happens to be the only hero with the superpower to cross cinematic universes, so as Sony continues to develop their own Spidey-verse you never know what surprises the future might hold.”

Anyone paying attention could see what Feige was hinting at: A Spider-Man/Venom crossover. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man did not appear in the first Venom, even though the two characters are inextricably linked in Marvel Comics. (In the comics, Venom is originally an alien suit that Spider-Man discovers. Eventually, Spider-Man realizes his swanky new costume is alive, and trying to permanently bond with him, so he ditches it. At that point it hooks up with Eddie Brock and becomes Venom.) The separation between the two characters was due to the previous Marvel and Sony deal — which was for Spider-Man, but not for all of these ancillary characters, like Venom.

So Venom and Spidey remained apart for the time being. But then Feige strongly suggested that Spider-Man and Venom would meet (they’d need to “cross cinematic universes” to do it), and now Venom director Ruben Fleischer offered an even stronger confirmation in an interview with Fandom. He says a Spider-Man/Venom movie is “where it’s all going to lead”:

And that’s the exciting thing, because we changed the origin of Venom … in the comics, he evolved from Spider-Man but because of the Marvel-Sony thing we weren’t able to that. And so the thing I think it’s building towards, and will be exciting to see, is when they actually do confront each other.

With the news that Venom 2 will feature Shriek, Carnage’s bestie, it’s easy to envision a scenario where that movie sets up a sequel featuring both Spider-Man and Venom fighting and perhaps teaming up to stop Carnage. (That’s basically the premise of the famous ’90s crossover, Maximum Carnage.Venom 2 opens in theaters on October 2, 2020 — if it has a Tom Holland cameo, we’ll know that the two characters really are headed for a major crossover franchise.

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