After the box office disappointments of The Amazing Spider-Man series, it looked like Sony didn't quite know how to handle the character - even if he was one of the most popular superheroes in the world. However, after lending out the character to Marvel Studios for Spider-Man: Homecoming, they started a winning streak.
This continued with Tom Holland's Peter Parker appearing in various other Marvel movies, and the runaway hit of their own Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Everything was coming up Sony in 2018, with the Oscar-winning success of Spider-Verse supplemented by the huge box office success of Venom.
The movie raked in $855 million worldwide (not to shabby considering the budget was $100m) and won over plenty of fans - mostly for the amped-up performance from Tom Hardy.
Here's the trailer for Venom:Speaking to Fandango recently, Sony producer Amy Pascal was asked about Venom, and the future plans they have to expand their own mini universe of movies (including the upcoming Morbius, starring Jared Leto).
"The key thing to Venom to Tom Holland, Spider-Man, Spider-Verse is that as wonderful and as tempting as it is to connect the dots, nothing works if the individual movies don't work and have their own integrity," she said of their future movies.
Then she spoke on the potential sequel to Venom, where she ended up confirming that Tom Hardy will be returning to play Eddie Brock - undoubtedly splitting his time between symbiotic madness and episodes of the Brock Report. "I can say that Tom Hardy will be back, magnificently playing that character as no one else can," Pascal said.
On what made Venom such a successful movie, she said:
"It's a couple of things. One of them is that Sony did a great job creating that franchise and giving it a life and giving it its own world. Then there's Tom Hardy. When you think of Venom, you'll never be able to think of anyone but Tom Hardy sitting in that bathtub of lobsters. And once you saw Tom Hardy do this character, that's all you needed to know."
Here's that bizarre lobster scene she's talking about:Now that's how you bank over $850 mil at the box office... apparently.
Fandango then asked her whether we'll actually see Spider-Man and Venom on screen together (a big deal for fans, given the fact that Venom was conceived as a Spider-Man villain). "Everybody would love to see that," she replied. "You never know someday... it might happen."
"I can say that we've had a fantastic partnership [with Marvel Studios] and you never know what's going to happen. We have a lot of stories to tell about Spider-Man, in every facet [...] We have big plans for Tom Holland to be a part of everything."
In the past, it's been unclear whether or not Venom actually takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It seems that they're leaving the doors open to a potential crossover in the future, but only time will tell...