Tom Hardy just confirmed what fans have suspected for years: a Spider-Man and Venom crossover with Tom Holland was this close to happening. Damn it. Appearing on The Discourse Podcast from The Playlist, Hardy opened up about the long-rumored crossover between Sony’s symbiote anti-hero and Marvel’s friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, revealing that the dream project was well into development before it ultimately collapsed behind the scenes.

“We got close,” said Hardy. “We got as close as I could possibly imagine getting, apart from doing a film together, which I would have loved to have done because that just means so much fun.”

When asked by host Mike DeAngelo whether “studio politics” were to blame for the crossover falling through, Hardy gave a knowing response: “For all the reasons that you explained ultimately in there.”

Hardy emphasized that his desire to make the crossover happen was less about box office success and more about giving younger audiences what they wanted.

“Fundamentally, for me, it would be for the kids. Because, you know, as much as adults love superhero films, as you can tell by the box office when they’re successful, I think I’m constantly reminded by children how important these characters are. And they don’t know why their favorite characters aren’t in films together.”

It’s a sentiment that underscores the frustration many fans have felt for years, watching Marvel and Sony tiptoe around each other’s characters without ever fully committing to a shared universe outside of a few Easter eggs and teases.

What Might Have Been For Spider-Man and Venom

Back in 2019, Venom director Ruben Fleischer told Fandom that the original plan was always to collide Hardy’s franchise with Holland’s Spider-Man—a vision the studio just couldn’t seem to bring to life.

“That’s where it’s all going to lead,” Fleischer said at the time. “And that’s the exciting thing, because we changed the origin of Venom [for the first movie]. In the comics, he evolved from Spider-Man, but because of the Marvel-Sony thing, we weren’t able to do that.”

While Hardy’s Venom trilogy never reached the Holland showdown it teased, the actor has no regrets.

“We were given a set of boundaries, and we were just really privileged to be able to play with a much-beloved IP like Venom in a way that we were allowed to play. The enjoyment of the work outweighed the limits of our possibilities with him because we just focused on what we were allowed to do. And we loved doing it.”

Venom: The Last Dance is on Netflix now.

via Collider