Tom Holland reveals he pitched Venom and Kraven the Hunter movies to Sony following the studio’s infamous brief split from Marvel Studios. Sony has held the rights to Spider-Man and the characters sprung from the pages of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s comics since the late ’90s and utilized them for a variety of films over the years, beginning with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy in the early aughts followed by Marc Webb’s short-lived The Amazing Spider-Man films. After the underwhelming response to the Andrew Garfield-led sequel, Sony would strike a deal with Marvel to share the rights to the webslinger and introduce a new iteration into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Holland beginning in Captain America: Civil War.
On the heels of the success of Holland’s first solo Spider-Man film, Sony got to work developing its own interconnected universe of films with characters from the comics that would come to be named Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, beginning with the Tom Hardy-led Venom. While the film was a critical flop, it would become a surprise box office smash and see plans continue for the universe with the recently released sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage and the long-gestating Morbius led by Jared Leto. Plans are currently in the works for a Kraven the Hunter film with Aaron Taylor-Johnson set in the titular role, though another Marvel actor may have helped get the ball rolling on the film’s development.
In an interview with Empire for the soon-to-be-released Spider-Man: No Way Home, Holland looked back on Sony and Marvel’s brief split. The actor recalled going to Amy Pascal’s house on the heels of the announcement and discussing the future for his character with her, including both Venom and Kraven the Hunter films. See what Holland said below:
“On the day that the announcement happened that I would no longer be in the MCU… I just drove over to Amy Pascal’s house and sat with her by her pool, and we sat there for hours, just chatting, and pitching movies. How would we do a film without Marvel? Does Peter Parker fall through a portal, and then he’s in the Venom world? Or do we do a Kraven the Hunter film? It was a nice distraction… because as a young kid I was so in love with Marvel, and I was so lucky to be a part of it that when they took the rug from under my feet, I was not ready to say goodbye yet.”
![Tom Holland Pitched Venom & Kraven Movies To Sony After Marvel Split](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/spider-man-no-way-home-franchise-ending.jpg)
Holland’s pitching of a Kraven the Hunter film to Pascal comes as a good indication of his dedication to the comics and keeping his time as Spider-Man alive on the big screen. Though the studio had spent the better part of the 2010s attempting to bring the iconic villain to life on screen, with teases first being included in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 intended to establish a Sinister Six film, however no actor was cast in the part as the film’s box office numbers would see all future plans for the franchise scrapped. The solo film in the SSU has seen a bumpy road in its development, with Antoine Fuqua being eyed to helm in 2018 though it would lay dormant for a few years until Triple Frontier‘s J.C. Chandor signed on to direct last year on a new script from Uncharted duo Art Marcum and Matt Holloway.
While the Kraven the Hunter movie may still be a couple of years away, the bridging of worlds between the MCU and SSU has already begun thanks to Venom: Let There Be Carnage. With many questions still surrounding the nature of its post-credits scene, both studios continue to tease the depth of coordination between them both in order to properly handle the sharing of characters. This multiverse merging is set to continue with Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is set to hit theaters on December 17.
Key Release Dates
Kraven the Hunter
Release Date:2024-08-30Morbius
Release Date:2022-04-01