Tom Holland Is In Venom, But As Peter Parker, Not Spider-Man

Is there another in-development comic book movie that’s garnered the same level of buzz as Venom?

With the exception of Avengers: Infinity War, Sony and Ruben Fleischer’s Spider-Man spinoff has been placed under such an intense spotlight that it seems like we’re never too far away from the next piece of content – leaked or otherwise. And sure enough, we’ve now got yet another update.

If you recall, the internet lost it yesterday when producer/director John Schnepp claimed that Tom Holland would be showing up in Venom. Given how many times we’ve heard that the project would be completely separate from the MCU, and that Spidey would not be involved, most people called him out, saying he was completely wrong with his scoop. Now, he’s clarifying things.

On the most recent episode of Collider’s Heroes, Schnepp explained that Holland has shot scenes for Sony’s spinoff, but not as Spider-Man. Rather, he’ll be making a cameo as Peter Parker. Furthermore, he explained that those who claimed a crossover wouldn’t work because Venom will be R-rated are wrong, as there’s been no confirmation of an R-rating just yet and it could end up being PG-13.

Of course, without any word on this from the studio, we’d advise taking what Schnepp says with a grain of salt. Admittedly, he sounds pretty confident in his intel, but on the other hand, we’ve been burned too many times on this issue not to be suspicious of it. All accounts to date posit Venom as a completely standalone movie, one that Sony hopes might launch their own little Marvel universe. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man appearing would pretty much blow that out of the water, placing the film squarely within the MCU.

With that also comes a certain amount of profit sharing between Sony and Disney, and while Spider-Man: Homecoming made both parties a bunch of money, major Hollywood studios aren’t famed for their cooperative skills. On top of that, putting Spider-Man in the movie implies that Tom Holland’s wallcrawler has already donned and rejected the symbiote suit, which feels like character development that we should probably see on screen first (let’s just ignore Spider-Man 3 for the moment). And, if it were the case, wouldn’t Sony want to be shouting this from the rooftops to build up hype for Venom?

Then again, like we said above, Disney and Sony Pictures were able to broker a deal that allowed Holland’s web-head to appear in Civil War – and later Spider-Man: Homecoming and the upcoming Avengers sequels – so it’s not exactly out of the question. At this point, though, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Venom has been earmarked for release on October 5th, and whether Tom Holland is involved or not, it seems all but certain that Tom Hardy will deliver a superhero performance for the ages.