'Spider-Man' spinoff 'Venom' has a villain (and no, we don't mean Venom)
Sony's still spinning, spinning, spinning away at its Marvel universe – and it's just caught three more characters in its web.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Spider-Man spinoff Venom has roped in Carnage as its villain. Meanwhile, two more classic Marvel characters, Mysterio and Kraven the Hunter, are lining up to get their own features.
Let's start with that Venom movie. Though Venom has often served as a villain in the comics and films (you may remember him as the Topher Grace character in Spider-Man 3), he'll be positioned as more of an antihero in the new movie.
Which means he'll need his own big bad, and that's where Carnage comes in. Venom is an alien symbiote who needs a human host to survive. In the movie, that human host will be Eddie Brock, to be played by Tom Hardy. Carnage is basically a darker, meaner version of Venom, who in the comics latches on to a murderer named Cletus Kasady.
With a release date of October 5, 2018 already locked in, Venom is positioned as the first film in Sony's Spidey spinoff 'verse – but the studio has plans for many more. Venom will be followed by Silver & Black, a Silver Sable / Black Cat team-up to start shooting under director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Beyond the Lights) this fall.
And after that? Although Sony hasn't made any big official announcement yet, THR reports the studio is developing projects centered around Kraven the Hunter and Mysterio.
In the comics, Kraven is a Russian big game hunter obsessed with proving himself to be the best in the world. He regularly ingests mystical potions that grant him the usual superhuman package: enhanced strength, speed, stamina, etc.
As for Mysterio, he is Quentin Beck, a dude from California who's after fame and fortune. He first tries his luck in Hollywood, working variously as a special effects artist, a stuntman, and a director, but eventually decides that supervillainy is his easiest path to notoriety.
The one thing all of the characters listed above have in common is that they're historically associated with Spider-Man – which makes it extra confusing that Sony's Marvel universe is not connected to Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, even though the current incarnation of Spider-Man is part of Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe. They're two entirely different continuities.
Well, at least for now. In an interview with Film Starts, Spider-Man: Homecoming producer Amy Pascal stated there was "a chance" that Tom Holland's Spider-Man could pop up in Sony's other, non-Spidey Marvel movies (like Venom and Silver & Black).
"Those movies will all take place in the world that we are now creating for Peter Parker," she said. "They'll be adjuncts to it, they may be different locations, but they will still all be in the same world. And they will be connected to each other as well."
Disney, however, is singing a different tune. "For now, there is no plan for Venom in the MCU," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told AlloCiné last week.
Topics Comics
