Venom Director on Defining a New Origin as It ‘Couldn’t Feature Spider-Man’

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As a big Venom fan, I was really interested to hear director Ruben Fleischer talk about how tough it was making the first movie. He explained that figuring out Venom’s backstory without being able to use Spider-Man was a real challenge! It’s been seven years since the film came out, and it’s cool to finally get some insight into what went on behind the scenes.

The director of Zombieland recently shared that he completely created the main villain in the 2018 film Venom – everything from the character’s look to their personality – because they couldn’t use Spider-Man due to rights complications.

Ruben Fleischer on the unique challenge of Venom’s origin story

In a recent interview on The Playlist’s Discourse Podcast, Fleischer explained that Spider-Man not being in the 2018 film Venom influenced how the writers developed the character of Eddie Brock.

The filmmaker, who is 51, explained that their movie was the first to really explore the world of Spider-Man characters outside of a direct Spider-Man film. Everyone involved was still figuring out the best way to approach the story. Because ‘Venom’ is so closely tied to Spider-Man, and they weren’t able to include Spider-Man in the movie, it presented a unique creative challenge.

Fleischer explained that although Venom and other Marvel characters could have appeared together in future films, he couldn’t count on that possibility when he was initially creating Venom’s origin story.

As I recall, the film was always meant to be separate from the Spider-Man universe. While there might have been potential for crossovers later on, the story was fundamentally its own and wasn’t built around being connected to Spider-Man.

Explaining how the lack of Spider-Man impacted Venom’s costume, Fleischer pointed out, “It’s interesting because Venom traditionally has a spider symbol on his chest in the comics, reflecting his origins connected to Spider-Man.”

The director explained they completely reimagined the character’s backstory and even designed a new symbol for his chest. They did this because it wouldn’t have been logical for him to have a spider emblem if he wasn’t connected to Spider-Man.

Although Tom Hardy’s Venom and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man appeared together briefly in scenes after the credits of their respective movies, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a full team-up never actually happened. These short scenes hinted at a possible future collaboration, but it didn’t materialize.

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2025-11-10 14:28