Tom Hardy’s two turns as Eddie Brock may have been slammed by the critics, but they’re certainly popular with the fans at the box office. So it should come as little surprise that during Sony Pictures’ panel at CinemaCon in Las Vegas this week, the studio announced Venom 3. At this stage there’s no director, screenwriter or stars confirmed, however Hardy himself definitely will be back.
At the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie and the symbiote were transported across the Marvel multiverse into Disney’s MCU, the universe with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.
However, Hardy’s character didn’t stick around, featuring only in a mid-credits scene for Spider-Man: No Way Home and being zapped back to his Sony universe, leaving behind a piece of Venom.
This suggests that we won’t be seeing him clash with Holland’s Peter Parker anytime soon, with a different Venom doing that in the MCU from that splat of symbiote left behind.
Nevertheless, Eddie is from the same universe as Morbius and Michael Keaton’s Vulture has now arrived in that reality from the MCU.
It appears that Sony could well be gathering a Sinister Six, but against which Spider-Man?
It’s possible that this universe is that of Andrew Garfield’s Web Slinger since he’s not faced a version of Venom before unlike Tobey Maguire’s.
Speculation is rife that his Peter Parker could feature in Venom 3 or maybe Hardy’s character will show up in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 if that film gets greenlit.
On top of all this, Sony have announced that Bad Bunny will star in another Spider-Man villain solo movie as El Muerto, a wrestler.
Technically last year’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife was Ghostbusters 3 as a direct sequel to Ghostbusters 2, but the third film in the franchise was the gender-swapped 2016 outing set in another universe.
The untitled Ghostbusters 5 is now in development with no release date as of yet and it’s not clear if it will be a direct sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife or not.
Although the end credits scene with Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore may suggest the action will return to New York City after all.
