Sony has not officially announced a fourth Venom film, and the studio marketed 2024’s *Venom: The Last Dance* as the final chapter of Tom Hardy’s trilogy. But “final” is a flexible word in Hollywood, and multiple factors, from box office returns to the broader state of Sony’s Marvel properties, will shape whether the franchise continues in some form. The real question is less “will there ever be another Venom movie” and more “what would a Venom 4 actually look like, and who would be in it?”
What Sony and Tom Hardy Have Said
Tom Hardy has been consistent in describing *The Last Dance* as his farewell to Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote. In press appearances surrounding the film’s release, Hardy framed the third installment as the natural endpoint of the story he wanted to tell. Sony’s marketing leaned into that finality too, with the title itself signaling a conclusion. None of this constitutes a contractual or legal guarantee that Venom 4 will never happen, but it does mean that any continuation would require either Hardy changing his mind or Sony moving forward without him.
Studios and actors have reversed course on “final” appearances before. Franchise filmmaking thrives on the tension between narrative closure and commercial opportunity. When a character remains profitable, the door rarely stays shut for long. But Hardy’s comments have been notably definitive compared to the usual hedging actors do when they want to leave room for a return. He’s spoken about the trilogy as a complete arc, not as something he might revisit under the right circumstances.
How The Last Dance Performed at the Box Office
Box office performance is the single biggest factor in whether a franchise continues, and *Venom: The Last Dance* sent a mixed signal. The film earned roughly $475 million worldwide on a reported production budget of around $120 million. On paper, that sounds profitable, but the reality is more complicated. Marketing costs for a global tentpole release typically add tens of millions on top of the production budget, and studios split theatrical revenue with exhibitors. The general rule of thumb is that a film needs to earn about two to two and a half times its production budget just to break even theatrically.
By that measure, *The Last Dance* was likely profitable, but it represented a significant decline from its predecessors. The first *Venom* earned over $850 million worldwide in 2018, and *Let There Be Carnage* pulled in roughly $500 million in 2021 despite releasing during the pandemic’s lingering effects on theater attendance. A steep downward trajectory across three films is not the kind of trend that makes a studio rush to greenlight a fourth installment. It suggests the audience is shrinking, not growing.
That said, the Venom films have always had an unusual cost-to-revenue profile. They’re relatively inexpensive by superhero standards, which means they don’t need to hit a billion dollars to justify their existence. Sony has historically been willing to continue franchises that perform modestly as long as the margins work. The question is whether the margins on a hypothetical fourth film, potentially without Tom Hardy, would still work.
The Problem With Sony’s Spider-Man Universe
To understand why Venom 4 is uncertain, you have to look at the broader landscape of Sony’s attempts to build a cinematic universe around Spider-Man-adjacent characters. Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man and a large roster of associated characters, and the studio has spent years trying to turn that roster into a Marvel-style shared universe. The Venom trilogy was the cornerstone of that effort, but nearly everything else Sony has tried in that space has underperformed or outright flopped.
*Morbius* (2022) was a critical and commercial disappointment. *Madame Web* (2024) performed even worse, becoming one of the lowest-grossing superhero films in recent memory. *Kraven the Hunter* (2024) continued the pattern. The cumulative effect is that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, sometimes called the SSU, has lost credibility with audiences. The Venom films were the exception, not the rule, and even they were trending downward.
This context matters because a hypothetical Venom 4 wouldn’t exist in isolation. It would be part of a franchise ecosystem that audiences have largely rejected. Sony has reportedly scaled back its ambitions for the SSU, and some planned projects have been shelved or reworked. A new Venom film would need to justify itself not just on its own merits but against the backdrop of a brand that has been damaged by repeated misfires.
Could Venom Continue Without Tom Hardy?
If Sony does pursue a fourth Venom film, the most likely path is a reboot or a reimagining with a new actor. The Venom symbiote, unlike some superhero identities, is not permanently tied to one host in the comics. Multiple characters have bonded with the symbiote over the decades, and the lore easily supports a story about Venom attaching to someone new. Sony could cast a different actor and tell a fresh story without contradicting anything established in the Hardy trilogy.
The risk, of course, is that Tom Hardy was the franchise. Critics were often lukewarm on the Venom films, but audiences showed up largely for Hardy’s oddball, committed performance as both Eddie Brock and the voice of the symbiote. The chemistry between Hardy and himself, playing a man arguing with an alien living inside him, was the franchise’s defining feature. A new actor stepping into that dynamic would face inevitable comparisons, and there’s no guarantee the audience would follow.
Hollywood has navigated actor transitions in major franchises before, with varying degrees of success. Some characters survive recasting easily because the brand is bigger than any individual performer. Others are so closely identified with one actor that audiences resist the change. Venom probably falls somewhere in the middle. The character has strong name recognition independent of Hardy, especially among younger audiences who know the symbiote from comics, animated series, and video games. But the film version of Venom is Hardy’s creation in a way that would make a clean handoff tricky.
The Multiverse and Crossover Possibilities
One path that wouldn’t require a traditional Venom 4 is folding the character into another franchise. The Venom films have flirted with connections to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most visibly in the post-credits scenes of *Let There Be Carnage* and *Spider-Man: No Way Home*, which briefly transported Eddie Brock into the MCU’s timeline. *The Last Dance* continued to play with these multiversal threads, leaving a small piece of the symbiote behind in the MCU’s reality.
That dangling plot thread is significant. It means Marvel Studios has a version of the Venom symbiote available for use in future MCU projects without needing Sony to produce a standalone Venom film. If Spider-Man encounters the black suit in a future MCU movie, that’s essentially a Venom story being told inside a different franchise. For many fans, this might actually be a more appealing outcome than Venom 4. The dream matchup has always been Spider-Man versus Venom with both characters given their full comic-book dynamic, something the Hardy trilogy never delivered because of rights-sharing complications.
Sony and Marvel Studios have a complex and evolving deal around the Spider-Man character. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man exists in the MCU but is technically a Sony property. The exact terms of future collaborations aren’t public, but both studios have financial incentives to keep working together. A Venom appearance in a Spider-Man film could satisfy audience demand for the character without the risk of launching a new standalone series.
Why “The Last” Rarely Means the Last in Franchise Filmmaking
Hollywood has a long history of branding installments as “final” and then continuing anyway. The pattern is so well established that audiences have learned to treat “last” titles with skepticism. Franchise filmmaking as a commercial practice is built on repetition and re-presentation of familiar characters and stories in modified forms, a cycle that resists permanent endings by design.1Oxford Academic. Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture The *Fast and Furious* saga has announced multiple “final” installments. The *X-Men* franchise ended and restarted. *Wolverine* had a definitive farewell in *Logan* that everyone assumed was permanent until *Deadpool & Wolverine* brought Hugh Jackman back. The commercial logic of intellectual property nearly always outlasts the creative logic of a clean ending.
The key variable is usually time. A franchise that seems exhausted in 2025 might look appealing again in 2030, especially if nostalgia builds or a new creative team pitches a fresh angle. Sony owns the Venom character indefinitely as part of its Spider-Man rights package. There’s no expiration date on the option to make another film. Even if the studio has no plans for Venom 4 right now, the character will remain available whenever the business case changes.
What Would Make Sony Pull the Trigger
Several scenarios could lead to a new Venom film. The most straightforward is a successful reboot pitch. If a writer or director brings Sony a take on Venom that feels genuinely different from the Hardy trilogy and comes with a star attached who can open a film, the economics could work. Superhero fatigue is a real phenomenon in the mid-2020s, but it’s not permanent, and the characters that survive downturns tend to be the ones with strong brand identities. Venom has that.
Another trigger would be the success of Venom in someone else’s movie. If the symbiote shows up in an MCU Spider-Man film and audiences respond enthusiastically, Sony would have clear market validation for a standalone return. This is essentially how the character was relaunched in comics multiple times: a popular guest appearance leads to a new solo series.
A third possibility is the animation route. Sony’s *Spider-Verse* films have been massive critical and commercial successes, and an animated Venom project, whether a feature film or a streaming series, could keep the character active at lower financial risk than a live-action blockbuster. Animation also sidesteps the recasting problem entirely, since the character’s visual identity isn’t tied to a specific actor’s face.
The least likely scenario in the near term is Tom Hardy returning. His public statements have been clear, and actors who leave franchises on their own terms rarely come back quickly. But “never” is an awfully long time, and if Sony were willing to write a large enough check and a sufficiently compelling script materialized, even that door isn’t truly sealed.
The Streaming and Television Factor
The entertainment landscape has shifted enough since 2018 that a hypothetical Venom continuation might not be a theatrical film at all. Studios increasingly develop franchise content for streaming platforms, where the financial math is different. A Venom series on a streaming service could tell a longer story at a fraction of the per-episode cost of a blockbuster film, and the risk profile is much more forgiving. A show that draws subscribers has value even if it wouldn’t have sold enough theatrical tickets to justify a $120 million budget.
Sony has a complicated streaming situation compared to Disney or Warner Bros., since it doesn’t own a major standalone streaming platform in the same way. Sony’s theatrical films have historically ended up on various platforms through licensing deals. But the studio has been expanding its television and streaming production, and a Venom series developed for a partner platform isn’t out of the question. The character’s comedic buddy-dynamic between host and symbiote translates well to episodic storytelling, where you have time to explore the relationship rather than racing through plot to reach a third-act battle.
For fans wondering whether they’ll ever see Venom on screen again, the honest answer is almost certainly yes, in some form. The character is too valuable and too recognizable for Sony to shelve permanently. Whether that means a Venom 4 with a new lead, a cameo in an MCU film, an animated project, or a streaming series is the part nobody can predict yet. What seems clear is that *The Last Dance* was the last dance for Tom Hardy’s version of the story, not necessarily for the character itself.