Even though “Venom: The Last Dance” is the final appearance in Sony’s Spider-Man trilogy of villains, Tom Hardy still really wants his symbiote to fight Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.
Hardy took the stage at New York Comic Con on Friday night to showcase his upcoming film, which hits theaters next week, and said he’s ready to fight Spider-Man “today.”
“I would love to fight Spider-Man. I would love to fight him now. I’m 100 percent happy to fight Spider-Man today. I would never say never,” he said. “We were specifically set up to bring Venom to movie form, and that’s what we did. “‘The Last Dance’ is the final piece in this trilogy and we are really excited about it.”
Hardy returns for one final time as Eddie Brock, the human half of Venom’s symbiote, in The Last Dance after starring in two independent films. Although he’s been mocked over the years and Spidey fans have been begging for a crossover, he’s yet to fight the wall-crawler.
However, there may be more symbiosis-focused films in the future. The latest trailer for “Venom” teases Knull, the evil alien creator of the symbiote recently introduced in Marvel comics. There’s a brief shot of him in the trailer where he’s sitting on a black throne with long white hair, just like in the comics.
“This is just an introduction to Knull. He’s a huge, huge character, so you can never be separated from him. This is just a little taster of Knull. We get to meet him. Who knows what the future holds,” director Kelly Marcel said onstage. “The plot of Eddie and Venom ends here. But you know, there are a lot of stories of cohabitation in law. There are a lot of places you can go, and there might be a few Easter eggs here that might start that journey.
“The Last Dance” picks up directly after 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” According to the official log, “Eddie and Venom are on the run. Pursued by both worlds and with the Network shutting down, the duo are forced to make a devastating decision that will bring… The curtain is on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.
Along with Hardy, the cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lou, Alana Ubach, and Stephen Graham.
Also scheduled to come this year is “Kraven the Hunter,” in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson will play the big game hunter from the Spider-Man comics. After “Venom” and “Morbius” were rated PG-13, “Kraven” will be the first Spidey spin-off to be rated R. The cast includes Russell Crowe as Kraven’s father, Ariana DeBose as his lover Calypso, And Fred Hechinger in the role. His brother and chameleon master of disguise Alessandro Nivola as the evil Rhino and Christopher Abbott as the foreign mercenary.
“Venom: The Last Dance” and “Kraven the Hunter” are the only two films released in the “Spider-Man” universe from Sony. “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse,” the final film in the dimension-hopping trilogy starring Miles Morales and a slew of other creeps, has remained without a date since being postponed. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Shang-Chi” director Destin Daniel Cretton has signed on for a fourth “Spider-Man” film starring Tom Holland, but that has not been officially announced.
Holland revealed on a podcast this week that he and co-star Zendaya recently read the script for “Spider-Man 4.”
“We have creativity and we have a proposal and a draft, which is excellent,” he said. “It needs work, but the writers are doing an amazing job. I read it three weeks ago and it really lit a fire in me. Zendaya and I sat down and read it together and sometimes we would jump around the living room like this was a real movie that deserved the respect of the audiences.”