Unless things continue going seriously wrong, it’s highly unlikely that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe will ever usurp Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios as the biggest and best franchise based on the comic book company’s back catalogue, but Venom 3 does have a chance to blow many of the MCU’s most recent efforts out of the water.
Sure, the opening installment and sequel Let There Be Carnage hardly set the critical world on fire, but they both went down a storm with audiences, who showered the bonkers duology in praise on the way to propelling the two-film saga to a robust box office haul north of $1.3 billion, even more impressive when you consider the second chapter arrived in the pandemic era.
Not only is Venom 3 expected to be Hardy’s swansong as Eddie Brock – at least as far as we’ve been led to believe – but his longtime friend, producer, and co-writer Kelly Marcel will be directing, so we can at the very least assume there’s going to be an awful lot of heart and soul poured into what could be Eddie Brock’s final stand.
With the MCU currently in the midst of being torn to shreds for its many recent failings, Hardy popped up on Instagram to reveal that pre-production is underway on his third outing as the symbiotic superhero, while also sharing a deleted scene from the opener for good measure.
Venom 3 doesn’t have a release date as of yet, but based on the timeline of the previous pair, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect an October 2024 debut to be announced further down the line as things continue picking up steam behind the scenes.