Venom Confirmed for A New Movie (But It’s Not What Marvel Fans Were Expecting)

Marvel fans long thought it would be impossible to one day see the fan-favorite character Venom done justice on the big screen. After his lackluster appearance in Spider-Man 3, the villain seemed likely to live only on the pages of Marvel comics. Actor Tom Hardy eventually proved that it was possible, not only starring in a live-action Venom movie but leading an entire trilogy focused solely on the anti-hero. Despite a lackluster critical reception, the films grossed a combined $1.8 billion at the global box office, though it all appeared to be coming to a close with 2024’s Venom: The Last Dance.

Now, the brain-eating symbiote lives, with The Hollywood Reporter bringing word that a new Venom movie is officially in development at Sony Pictures. There’s one major difference this time around, though, which is that the new Venom movie will be an animated film and not a live-action one. One confusing tidbit about the project, though, is that Tom Hardy will be involved in some capacity, making it unclear if he will voice the hero, if the new movie will be a continuation of his series, or if it’s simply a case of being grandfathered in for future Venom projects. There’s more good news, though, and it’s who will direct.

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According to THR, even though a screenwriter has not been brought on board for the new Venom movie, the film does have a director, or rather, directors. Final Destination: Bloodlines and Freaks directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein have been tapped to both direct and produce the new movie. Given how the two revived the horror franchise last summer, making it the highest-grossing of the entire series, this should give Venom fans plenty to be excited about. Not only does Venom’s move into animation open up the potential for the character to do even wilder and weirder things like he’s done in comics, but the creative minds that gave us Bloodlines‘ unique deaths feel like creators suited for Venom’s specific brand of justice.

As noted, no writer is officially attached to the film, with the trade reporting that Sony Pictures Animation will be opening a writer’s room to figure out the angle for the film. So what does this mean for Marvel fans? Unfortunately, it almost certainly means a long, long wait. Not only do animated movies notoriously take years to produce and release, but without even a logline for a plot, that means a finished script is still far out. This means that the animated Venom movie (while previously rumored last year) is still years away from release at best.

Moving Venom into the animated arena for his next feature film also makes sense as a way to keep interest in the character alive without consistently being forced to consider its relationship to Spider-Man. In the pages of comics, Venom was retconned to have been Spider-Man’s famous black suit, going on to form a bitter rivalry with the hero in the years after they went their separate ways. Marvel fans were expecting at least a passing reference to the web-slinging hero in the feature films, only to get a brief post-credit scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home that now makes absolutely no sense thanks to The Last Dance.

With an animated movie, Venom could be free to ignore what’s going on with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies and no longer feel the pressure to address it from fans. On the flipside, an animated Venom movie will no doubt bring up the potential for a crossover with the animated Spider-Verse movies. There’s a Venom-Verse after all out there, with a whole host of variants that have a taste for brains.