00:00Hi everybody!
00:01Tom Hardy is back in another comic book movie sporting a more intelligible accent.
00:04I don't know.
00:05Kinda.
00:06Venom has hit theaters in what Sony hopes will be the first of many spin-offs starring
00:09Spider-Man related characters.
00:11This week on Heat Vision Breakdown, we look forward at what's next and offer a few suggestions
00:15of how to make a Spider-Man universe work.
00:22Let's begin with a quick recap.
00:23Long ago, before Marvel Comics was the powerhouse it is today, and Stan Lee had become technically
00:27the highest grossing actor of all time , the company granted the film rights
00:31to many of its prized characters to Hollywood Studios.
00:34Fox got the X-Men and Fantastic Four, soon to return to Marvel thanks to the pending Disney-Fox
00:38merger.
00:39New Line got Blade, Lionsgate got Punisher, and Sony scored arguably Marvel's crown jewel,
00:44Spider-Man, and the hundreds of related characters going along with him, even Iguana.
00:48The worst of all of them.
00:49Spidey has had ups and downs on the big screen with Sony, but in a landmark deal with Marvel
00:53Studios, the wall crawler can now appear in MCU movies like next year's Avengers 4.
00:57Or maybe not.
00:58Ah!
00:59Still hurts!
01:00Spider-Man!
01:01Venom is taking place in a universe separate from the MCU, though that sort of depends on
01:06who you ask.
01:07Former Sony chief and long time Spider-Man producer Amy Pascal once said the two universes
01:12were one and the same, though I guess she forgot to tell that to Kevin Feige.
01:15Well those movies will all take place in the world that we are now creating for Peter Parker.
01:22I mean, there'll be adjuncts to it, they may be different locations, but it will still
01:27all be in the same world.
01:28So what exactly are the Spider-Verse films in the works?
01:32Glad you asked.
01:33Tom Hardy has signed on for three films to appear as Eddie Brock slash Venom, so it's
01:36safe to say there could be more of him, them, in the future.
01:39While Marvel Studios cast smaller stars like Chris Pratt or Chris Evans and turned them
01:43into A-listers, Sony has gone the opposite route, courting A-listers like Hardy and Oscar
01:47winner Jared Leto for its projects.
01:49No Chris's.
01:50Leto is attached to play Morbius, the living vampire, in a standalone film for life director
01:54Daniel Espinosa.
01:56And by casting the actor, they have saved millions on production costs as Leto is a real-life
01:59vampire.
02:00Have you ever seen Jared Leto in Direct Sunlight?
02:03Have you, Brian?
02:04Nope.
02:05No one has.
02:06For a long time, Sony was developing a Black Cat Silver Sable film from Gina Prince Bythewood,
02:13before opting to split them into separate features.
02:16The studio is also developing a film about African American hero Nightwatch, which has
02:19had interest from Spike Lee, as well as Silk about a Korean American superhero.
02:23Spider-Man villain Kraven the Hunter, who dresses like rapper Macklemore, also is tentatively
02:27getting his own feature.
02:28Though it's worth stressing that none of these movies even have release dates yet.
02:32So like that proposed Black Cat Silver Sable movie, they could just disappear, like Spider-Man.
02:38The big question mark is how any of these movies would tie together.
02:41Marvel Studios found success by slowly weaving its stories together over four years, culminating
02:45with 2012's Avengers.
02:46DC, on the other hand, failed by doing too much too soon.
02:50Oh, you like superhero team ups?
02:51Here's a bunch of emails and YouTube clips shoehorning the rest of the Justice League into
02:55an already bloated movie.
02:56Who made those logos?
02:57Was it Lex Luthor?
02:58Was he bored one day and decided to mess around in Photoshop?
03:00Hmm.
03:01Regardless, Warner Bros. is now focusing on standalones, like Joaquin Phoenix's Joker
03:05film, many of which take place decades in the past.
03:07Smart Money would suggest that Sony should be incredibly cautious when trying to tie its
03:11movies together, particularly as, unlike The Avengers, many of its characters don't actually
03:15have a lot of natural reasons for interacting, outside of telling each other which neighborhood
03:19from New York they come from.
03:19Oh, you're from Queens?
03:20I'm from the Bronx.
03:21Oh, yeah.
03:22Unfortunately for Sony, the team up people actually want to see is Spider-Man and Venom,
03:27and that's the one that poses the greatest difficulty.
03:29Tom Holland, who has a six-picture deal to play Peter Parker, is currently shooting his
03:32second Spider-Man solo movie and will appear in Avengers 4, meaning after all is said and
03:37done, he'll still have one film left on his contract.
03:39Though, as Robert Downey Jr. and Hugh Jackman have shown, contracts are made to be extended
03:44again, and again, and again, and then again, and again one more time.
03:49A Venom without Spider-Man doesn't make a lot of sense, and many speculate that's
03:52why the Hardy film is rated PG-13 instead of R, so that tonally it wouldn't be jarring
03:57for the two to have a crossover in the future.
03:59There are ways this could work.
04:00Sony's other Spider-Man movie this year, Spider- Into the Spider-Verse.
04:04The animated film takes place in a different universe entirely, the Spider-Verse, and establishes
04:09there are multiple Spider-Men in various universes out there.
04:12Could Sony's Spider-Man universe take a page from that and introduce a new Spider-Man
04:15not played by Tom Holland for this universe?
04:18Or, better yet, could Tom Holland's Spidey somehow travel to Venom's universe, or vice
04:22versa, via some sort of science experiment?
04:25It's comics after all, the land of crazy, convoluted plotlines, and that might be a nice compromise.
04:30Here's what Tom Hardy himself had to say at the Venom premiere.
04:32Uh, we didn't get him.
04:34What the hell?
04:37So what do you think?
04:38Do you think we'll ever see Venom and Spider-Man on the big screen together again?
04:40I hope so.
04:41Let us know in the comments right down there, and join us here every Friday morning for
04:44new episodes of Heat Vision Breakdown, with me!
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