Tom Hardy on Venom vs. Spider-Man, Knull Symbiote Movies in Future

Even though Venom: The Last Dance marks his final appearance in Sony's Spider-Man villain trilogy, Tom Hardy still wants his legendary symbiote to fight Tom Holland's Spider-Man.

Hardy took the stage at New York Comic Con on Friday night to introduce his upcoming film, which hits theaters next week, and said he's ready to fight Spider-Man “today.”

“I would like to fight Spider-Man. I would like to fight him now. I'm 100 percent excited to fight Spider-Man today. I would never say never,” he said. “Our intention was to bring Venom to a film format and that's exactly what we did. “The Last Dance” is the final piece in this trilogy and we are very excited about it.”

Hardy returns one final time as Eddie Brock, the human half of the Venom symbiote, in The Last Dance after starring in two standalone films. Although it's been teased over the years and Spidey fans have been begging for a crossover, he hasn't fought the Wall Crawler yet.

However, there may be more films focused on symbiotes in the future. The latest “Venom” trailer teased Knull, the evil alien creator of the symbiote recently introduced in the Marvel comics. In the trailer, there's a brief shot of him sitting on a black throne with stringy, long white hair, just like in the comics.

“This is just the introduction to Knull. He's a huge, huge character, so you can never be satisfied with him. This is just a small taste of Knull. We get to know him. “What the future holds for him, who knows,” said director Kelly Marcel on stage. “Eddie and Venom’s storyline ends here. But as you know, there are many symbiote stories in canon. There are lots of places to go and maybe there are a few Easter eggs here that could start that journey.”

“The Last Dance” begins directly after 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” The official logline states: “Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both worlds and as the web tightens, the duo is forced to make a devastating decision that brings down the curtain on Venom and Eddie’s final dance.”

In addition to Hardy, the cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach and Stephen Graham.

This year also sees the release of “Kraven the Hunter,” in which Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays the big game hunter from the Spider-Man comics. After the “Venom” films and “Morbius” received a PG-13 rating, “Kraven” will be the first Spidey spinoff to be rated R. The cast includes Russell Crowe as Kraven's father, Ariana DeBose as his lover Calypso and Fred Hechinger as his brother and master of disguise Chameleon, Alessandro Nivola as the villainous Rhino and Christopher Abbott as the mercenary foreigner.

“Venom: The Last Dance” and “Kraven the Hunter” are the only films with release dates in Sony’s “Spider-Man” universe. The animated film Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, the final film in the dimension-hopping trilogy starring Miles Morales and a host of other wall-crawlers, has remained undated since its delay. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Shang-Chi” director Destin Daniel Cretton has signed on to direct a fourth “Spider-Man” film starring Tom Holland, but this has not been officially announced yet.

Holland revealed on a podcast this week that he and co-star Zendaya both recently read a script for Spider-Man 4.

“We have a creative and we have a pitch and a draft, which is excellent,” he said. “It takes work, but the writers are doing a great job. I read it three weeks ago and it really lit a fire in me. Zendaya and I sat down and read together, and sometimes we jumped around the living room like this was a real movie that deserved the fans' respect.”