Tom Hardy wants to sink his teeth into a Spider-Man-Venom crossover. But which Spider-Man? Venom: The Last Dance (out October 25) is the third and final film in Sony’s Venom trilogy, marking Hardy’s fourth outing as the symbiote-bonded Eddie Brock, who we last saw in the mid-credits scene of 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. After a haywire spell cast by Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange brought him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside other Spider-Man villains from throughout the multiverse, Eddie spent his stint in the MCU at a bar in Mexico before he was blipped back to Sony’s Spider-Man Universe — leaving the almost-Sinister Six shy of one member and never crossing paths with Peter Parker 1 (Tom Holland), Peter 2 (Tobey Maguire), or Peter 3 (Andrew Garfield).
“I would love to fight Spider-Man. I would love to fight him now. I’m happy to fight Spider-Man today, 100 percent,” Hardy said onstage during the Venom 3 New York Comic Con panel. “I would never say never. We were specifically set up to bring Venom to a movie format, and that’s what we’ve done. The Last Dance is the final piece in that trilogy, and we’re really excited about that.”
But with there being three live-action Spider-Men, ComicBook asked Hardy to clarify which webhead he wants to tango with after The Last Dance. “Tom Holland, without a shadow of a doubt,” Hardy said in our exclusive interview (below).
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After he faced off with another comic book adversary in 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage — Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson), a.k.a. the symbiotic serial killer Carnage — Hardy said that a potential run-in with Spider-Man depended on Sony and Marvel Studios’ ongoing partnership concerning the Spider-Man movie rights.
“I would be remiss if I wasn’t trying to steer any kind of connectivity,” he told Esquire. “I wouldn’t be doing the job if I wasn’t awake and open to any opportunity or eventuality or be excited by that. Obviously, that’s a large canyon to leap, to be bridged by one person alone, and it would take a much higher level of diplomacy and intelligence, sitting down and talking, to take on an arena such as that.
“Should both sides be willing, and it be beneficial to both sides, I don’t see why it couldn’t be,” he continued. “I hope and strongly, with both hands, push, eagerly, towards that potential, and would do anything to make that happen, within what’s right in business. But it would be foolish not to head towards the Olympic Games if you were running 100 meters, so yeah! I want to play on that field.”
In Venom: The Last Dance, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom are on the run, hunted by both their worlds: on Earth, by the military (at the charge of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character) and off-world, by the God of the Symbiotes, Lord of the Abyss, King in Black: Knull. In the conclusion to the Venom trilogy, “The duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance,” per the synopsis.
In addition to Hardy and Ejiofor, Venom 3 stars Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spider-Man), Alanna Ubach (Euphoria), Peggy Lu (reprising her role as Mrs. Chen), and Stephen Graham (reprising his Venom 2 role as Detective Mulligan). Kelly Marcel, co-writer of the first two films, makes her directorial debut and directs from a script she co-wrote with Hardy. Avi Arad (Borderlands), Matt Tolmach (Morbius), Amy Pascal (Spider-Man: No Way Home), and Hutch Parker (The Wolverine) are the producers with Marcel and Hardy. Venom 3 is in theaters Oct. 25.