Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is basically dead. According to reports, the studio is no longer interested in making movies about Spider-Man without featuring the webslinger himself, whose only appearance in these live-action movies was a brief cameo in “Madame Web” as a newborn baby.
It makes sense, of course. This has been, without a doubt, the most disastrous attempt at a cinematic universe since Universal’s Dark Universe. Almost none of the Sony Spider-Man villain movies were loved by critics, audiences, or humans in general. Granted, there are some fans of the “Venom” movies, which do have some of the most bizarre and fun moments in a superhero movie trilogy in a while — like Venom becoming a gay icon at a nightclub, or Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock climbing into a lobster tank. Still, you can only go so far with a universe made almost entirely of comic book villains that are forcefully turned into antiheroes.
We saw the effects of that in “Kraven the Hunter,” the last of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe movies. As our own Witney Seibold wrote in his review for /Film, the film “is an incoherent, incompetent gallimaufry of worn-down superhero tropes that have been hastily shoved toward an audience the filmmakers know they’ve long ago lost.” But at one point, there was a discussion about injecting some Venom into that movie.
Kraven the Hunter almost featured Venom … kind of
Despite being probably the last time Sony makes a movie about a Spider-Man character that doesn’t focus entirely on Spider-Man, “Kraven the Hunter” surprisingly features zero connections to any of the other movies. There is not even a post-credits scene teasing a project that could entice audiences to crave more Kraven. This is a shame, because it would make sense that the only reason to do a cinematic universe of Spider-Man villains not featuring Peter Parker would be to then unite them all in a big Sinister Six-style event crossover film.
Sadly, that never came to pass, and other than a brief and very dumb meeting between Morbius and Vulture, none of these protagonists ever met one another in a Sony Spider-Man Universe film. Except, it could have happened.
Concept artist Jules Darriulat took to Instagram to share a piece of concept art for “Kraven the Hunter” that would have Sergei Kravinoff meet with Venom himself (kind of). The scrapped scene shows Venom lying half-dead in some desolate wasteland surrounded by other dead symbiotes. Given how out-of-place this could have felt in the main story of “Kraven the Hunter,” it’s more likely the scrapped scene was meant to be part of a post-credits scene or nightmare sequence. Unfortunately, we may never know — let alone see Venom and Kraven meet.
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