Future Venom and Spider-Man films leading to crossover movie, confirms Ruben Fleischer

The Venom franchise will lead to a confrontation with Spider-Man, says director Ruben Fleischer.

Tom Hardy made his debut as the Marvel antihero in Sony’s first Venom solo movie and after earning $856 million at the box office a sequel was greenlit and with Andy Serkis confirmed as director in August.

Serkis posted the cover of Venom Lethal Protector (1993) #6 to celebrate and confirm his hiring, and the cover features Venom and Spider-Man, with the tagline: “It's not their final battle but it just might be their greatest.”

Speaking to Fandom, Fleischer says that the sequel is leading towards Tom Holland’s Peter Parker and Hardy’s Eddie Brock teaming up.

“That’s where it’s all going to lead,” he said. “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.”

It’s unclear if that confrontation will happen in Venom 2 or a subsequent film. It was recently confirmed that Spider-Man will feature in one more MCU movie and a third solo film, with Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios on creative duties.

Read more: Tom Hardy is co-scripting Venom 2

It would make sense to crossover Venom into the Spider-Man universe especially as a Morbius, the Living Vampire movie, starring Jared Leto, is in production.

The Maximum Carnage comic book run sees Morbius form an uneasy alliance with Spider-Man and Venom in order to take down Carnage, so the arrival of this new movie might be a step towards bringing this story to the big screen.

Venom introduced Carnage (Woody Harrelson) at the end of the movie and established Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) as an antihero rather than a villain, so this would be an obvious direction for Sony to go with in order to expand its Marvel universe and bring together its roster of big names.

Read more: Venom and Spider-Man crossover movie will be ‘scary and really funny’

Serkis has said that Hardy played a significant part in the writing process for Venom 2 with original writer Kelly Marcel.

"Tom [Hardy] was very involved with the writing - with [screenwriter] Kelly Marcel - of the new story," the Venom 2 director said. "So it's very much centred around their take."

"I'm excited to work with all the great actors who are involved. It's a fantastic franchise," he added. "I'm really honored to have been asked to direct it. And it feels like it's a very, again, very contemporary story. And it's I think it's going to be, hopefully, a story piece of cinema."

Venom 2 is expected in cinemas from 2 October, 2020