Sony has been running with its, until now, only major superhero franchise: Spider-Man.  This iconic Marvel character has been prevented from crossing over with any other Marvel characters as Fox has the X-Men, Deadpool and the Fantastic Four and Marvel Studios is doing the shared universe with pretty much everyone else.  Now we can expect Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War and may end up having a permanent deal between Marvel Studios and Sony for Spider-Man, but what about the rest of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery?

Back in the days of the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy we were promised a Venom solo movie, after he had been featured in Spider-Man 3.  Now, it has been reported that Dante Harper has been hired by Sony to write the script for the new Venom movie.  This does not, however, have any crossover with the upcoming new Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland, and is instead intended to stand alone as its own story.  Harper is a very capable screenwriter, especially for high-concept fantasy and science fiction stories, writing films like Hansel and Gretel and Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise.

It is difficult to say why they would drop Spider-Man from a connection to Venom, unless they are intended on having a total Spider-Man crossover with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and are just trying to get another title out before they have to change their license rights.  The new Spider-Man movie will be coming out in the summer of next year, so Venom is expected to come out a  year or two after that.