Marvel fans almost got the showdown of their dreams! Tom Hardy, the star of Sony’s Venom trilogy, recently spilled the Marvel-Sony tea on “The Discourse Podcast” from The Playlist. He confirmed that a crossover between his Venom and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man came very close to reality before crashing into a wall of studio politics.
“We got close,” Hardy shared, reflecting on the near-miss with Holland’s web-slinger. “As close as I could ever imagine getting without actually doing a movie together—which, trust me, I’d have jumped at. It would’ve been an absolute blast.” When host Mike DeAngelo prodded about the collapse, hinting at studio interference, Hardy kept it vague but nodded to the obvious. “It didn’t happen for all the reasons you’d expect,” he said cryptically.
So why was Hardy so eager to pit Venom against—or alongside—Spider-Man? “It’s all about the kids,” he explained. “Sure, adults flock to superhero flicks, as the box office proves, but kids remind me constantly how much these characters mean to them. They don’t get why their favorites can’t just team up on screen.”
Hardy first unleashed Venom in 2018’s Venom, a Sony hit that raked in $856 million globally. He returned for Venom: Let There Be Carnage in 2021 and wrapped up with Venom: The Last Dance in 2025, which pulled in $478 million and was billed as his final swing as the antihero. “We had our sandbox, and we played in it with everything we had,” Hardy said on the podcast. “We poured our hearts into Venom within the boundaries we were given—and we loved every second of it.”
The dream of a Venom-Spider-Man clash isn’t a new one. Back in 2019, Venom director Ruben Fleischer told Fandom that the plan was always to steer Hardy’s franchise toward a Holland showdown. “That’s the endgame,” Fleischer said. “We tweaked Venom’s origin since we couldn’t tie it to Spider-Man due to the Marvel-Sony split, but the goal was always to build up to that epic confrontation.”
Hardy’s been vocal about his Spidey-fighting fantasies before. At last year’s Venom: The Last Dance premiere, he told Variety, “I’d love to take on Spider-Man—right now, today, 100%. I’d never rule it out.” Sadly, it seems studio red tape kept that dream from swinging into reality.
However, there’s always a chance Marvel and Sony could include Tom Hardy’s Venom in the Multiverse Saga of the MCU in Avengers Doomsday or Avengers Secret Wars.
What do you think? Would Venom vs. Spider-Man have been the ultimate multiverse mashup?
