Popverse's top stories of the day

• Marvel's Kevin Feige talked to John Boyega about who he'd play in the MCU, but "there ain't no room for me," says the Star Wars star
• MEMBERS ONLY: Watch the Lord of the Rings movie reunion panel with Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, John Rhys-Davies, and Andy Serkis from Chicago's C2E2 2025
• Sorry, webheads: Tom Hardy says we weren't as close to that Spidey/Venom movie as was reported

Tom Hardy, AKA cinema’s greatest Venom — sorry, Topher Grace — is walking back those comments about studio politics derailing a Spider-Man/Venom crossover movie, but doing so in such a way that might suggest there's more to the story than he intends.

Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, Hardy says that his previous comments were taken out of context: “I didn’t say that at all. That’s kind of moved on from a very simple quote that I said specifically about my children watching Venom. It’s hard to explain to a young child why their favorite superheroes can’t be in a film together and that’s such a shame. And we almost got it, but it didn’t happen, which is the truth. It didn’t happen.”

So far, so good, right? But then he says this:

“And we almost got together because I remember being in the Spider-Man movie and you know it was connected, and it just didn’t happen. The trilogy is now over and it didn’t happen. So, it didn’t get killed by anything, it just didn’t happen.”

Tom Hardy was, of course, in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home — he’s in the post-credit scene in a bar, before he gets zapped back to his own reality — so why is he saying that it didn’t happen…? Unless there’s a version of No Way Home with far more Venom in it that we never got to see? Is there a Tom Hardy cut of Spider-Man: No Way Home that Marvel is keeping from us?!?

Okay, we’re joking; he’s clearly saying that any potential crossover movie didn’t happen, despite Spider-Man: No Way Home’s cameo confirming that Spider-Man and Venom could, in fact, co-exist in the same movie without reality (or attorneys with keen eyes for rights violations) exploding. We were simply underscoring how easy it is to do exactly what he’s complaining about:

“I’ve been misquoted there,” Hardy said about his original comments. “People get excited about anything Venom or anything to do with superheroes and stuff and it’s sort of taken on another life.”

So, you know, we didn’t get as close to a Spider-Man/Venom movie as we might have hoped — unless there really is a Tom Hardy cut of Spider-Man: No Way Home and he was trying to tell us something in code. That’s not too out there, is it…? (Yes. Yes, it is.)

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• The MCU needs Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik in it (and not just for the X-Men connection)
• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.