Though fans will get to see the Iron Spider suit in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Infinity War, actor Tom Holland says that the black symbiote suit is less likely to appear.
“The black suit hasn’t even been a discussion,” said Holland, who plays Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the hit franchise. “It hasn’t, not in the Disney Studio it hasn’t been discussed… Maybe it will be in the future. We don’t know.”
In the comic books, Spider-Man gets a black suit that is actually an alien symbiote bonded to his body; he later rejects the creature, however, when he realizes that it is taking control of him. The symbiote goes on to fuse with Eddie Brock, a journalist who has a grudge against Spider-Man, and become the supervillain (and later anti-hero) Venom.
The fact that Brock/Venom are not slated to appear anytime soon will be a disappointment for some fans, but should not be much of a surprise; Marvel Studios and Disney want to differentiate their version of the Spider-Man mythos from their competitor, Sony, which technically owns the rights to the character. Sony has already adapted the Venom arc (somewhat poorly) in Spider-Man 3, and are doing so again.
Set for release on October 5, Venom stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, who in this version is presumably skipping over the villain phase and going right to anti-hero. Not much is known about the plot at this point, but it may be based on the “Agent Venom” story line from the comics (where a different Venom, Flash Thompson, worked for the government) and will apparently have Carnage (another symbiote bonded to a serial killer) as an antagonist.
This is one of several planned spin-offs from the Spider-Man franchise, which also includes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (starring lesser-known web-slinger Miles Morales) and Silver and Black, focused on anti-heroic characters Silver Sable and Black Cat.
While the black suit and Venom may be off the table for now, Holland’s Spider-Man still has big things in store for him. He will be using the Iron Spider suit (made by Tony Stark) in the new movie, which Holland says is “pretty spectacular,” adding that the CGI artists who worked on the movie “really, really knocked out in the park.”
