This article contains spoilers for The Flash, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Venom and Morbius.
The recent superhero movie and tv shows coming out from Marvel and DC, are beginning to involve the multiverse and where the future of both studios are going to lead to.
There has already been confusion surrounding characters for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, DC Extended Universe, DC Universe and the MCU, in particular Batman, Superman Spider-Man and Wonder Woman etc.
Who is the Spider-Man of the Sony Universe movies?
While Sony’s animated universe movies are coherant and a breeze to watch, especially the recently entertaining Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse film.
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) for live-action has paved the way for creating these messy theories about which Spider-Man will end up fighting the villains, they are creating spin-offs for.
With multiple marketing keyword drops in interviews, Spider-Man teases in trailers; to generate hype that there will be this eventual team-up.
Could Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland be the ones fighting Venom, Kraven the Hunter, Morbius, Vuture and El Muerto etc. It’s expected that the villains are now all in the same universe and will combine their efforts to fight the web-crawler.
Bad Bunny, who was set to star in the El Muerto film has exited the project, due to the writer’s strike and alleged issues behind the scenes. It’s not certain if this film will be end up being made, however, it’s currently being recast.
Tobey Maguire
When Morbius promos/trailers were released, Sony seemed to have been testing the waters with fan reactions; when they featured a Tobey Maguire PS4 model as graffiti on a wall, overlayed by the word ‘Murderer’ and then it was cut from the film.
Daniel Espinosa; the Morbius director had confirmed at the time, that Morbius lives in the same universe as Venom, with Michael Morbius even name-dropping the character in the movie.
Espinosa was also under the impression that a Spider-Man would be revealed soon, surrounding their universe… except, as of now, this still hasn’t happened yet.
In Tobey Maguire’s universe; there was already an Eddie Brock/Venom (Topher Grace), therefore, this is more than likely to rule out Tobey already. It would alao be repetitive since, he’s already gone through these events, with the death of Brock in Spider-Man 3 (2007).
Tom Holland
During the end credits of Venom: Let There Be Carnage; the world changed around Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) while on holiday in Mexico, he was then made aware of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man while briefly being in MCU.
This picks back up during the credits of Spider-Man: No Way Home; when Hardy is transported back to his universe again, leaving a piece of the symbiote behind, for Holland’s Spider-Man to potentially come across and have a storyline developed for this in a future film.
It would not seem that Tom Holland will be the one going up against these SSU spin-off villains, especially not a run in with Keaton’s Vulture again, that name-dropped Spider-Man to Morbius.
Andrew Garfield
Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man has not yet experienced fighting Venom. However, in the scrapped third TASM film that was going to be made, Peter Parker would have come into contact with the Symbiote and used this to bring back his loved ones.
Garfield did already face Rhino/Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) in a mechanized suit and even made a joke about it in No Way Home.
In the SSU, Kraven the Hunter’s trailer featured a Rhino played a different actor: Alessandro Nivola.
This Rhino played by Nivola will be a genetic mutation like the The Lizard, instead of a mechanized suit. This would imply that Andrew Garfield is not the one who is fighting these villains. The Kraven trailer also had Spiders crawling down to intimidate Kraven in a forest and synopsis name-dropping Spider-Man.
Miles Morales
There is a live-action Miles Morales/Spider-Man movie, officially teased by producer Avi Arad and Amy Pascal, that will also be made by Sony Pictures. This film is likely to be the one where Miles Morales will have to face these all of the villains.
Unless all of the villains team up to build some multiversal travel tech, to take on Spider-Man outside of their universe they are now in or some messy multiverse situation moves around the characters again.
It’s not likely to be Tobey, Andrew or Tom’s iteration. It’s looking to be Miles Morales or some other Spider-Man they want to introduce, for the villains to take their anger out on.
George Clooney as Bruce Wayne again in The Flash
Firstly, in the DC Chapter One announcements, it was made clear that Robert Pattinson’s Batman will continue going foward in the Elseworlds category and there will still need to be an actor to play the DCU Batman.
During The Flash film, there were multiple Batman actors due to the multiverse storyline, including George Clooney reprising as Bruce Wayne at the end.
It led to this, when Barry made one more change to the timeline; to get his father released from prison by proving that Henry didn’t kill his wife, Nora Allen.
Saving Nora was a fixed point, however making any change still made a ripple effect, causing Affleck and Keaton to now become Clooney and likely leaving Ezra’s Barry to remain in that timeline.
So many people I’ve seen think that George Clooney is becoming Batman again for James Gunn’s Chapter One: Gods & Monsters movie Brave and the Bold, that will be directed by Andy Muschietti.
It’s understandable that people might think that Clooney is in Brave and the Bold, given how much of a mess the DCEU is in, with actors like Henry Cavill shown in on-screen appearance in Black Adam and then CG versions in The Flash. Cavill was officially out as Superman just two months after the release of Black Adam.
Earlier, in February 2023, James Gunn was certain when a fan asked if Clooney would be the new Batman; with Gunn replying ‘Absolutely not!’.
Although, at the time there were two ways to look at this: he could be taking this phrasing literally, that Clooney may not be ‘new’, as it would mean that he was already playing his existing Batman aged in this universe. Or he’s just really not going to be Batman in this film.
James Gunn also confirmed on June 20th, on the social platform Bluesky that ‘Batman will be Bruce Wayne and the actor isn’t cast yet.’ Here is a screenshot to this post, as it’s not accessible without creating an account.
Another recent question was asked by a fan on James Gunn’s Instagram post on June 28, following the news that some of the leading cast of Superman: Legacy were revealed.
The casting for Batman is ‘Miles and Miles away’ Gunn writes. So, it all seems to support the claim that Clooney is not the DCU Batman for Brave and the Bold.
Wonder Woman
There’s still speculation surrounding the future of Gal Gadot going forward for the DCU. In our report from December 2022, Patty Jenkins talked about the cancellation of Wonder Woman 3.
Although, this film was cancelled, it doesn’t mean there is or isn’t still a future for Gal Gadot to play Wonder Woman in other character’s DCU content. Or they may still recast like they have done for Cavill and Amy Adams.
It could take a little bit of time getting used to seeing a mix-match of old and new actors together playing these characters if James Gunn does that. I do think it would be a good idea to start fresh by recasting everyone, and this will also give other actors a chance to portray these characters.
As I’ve just finished writing this, news has come in that James Wan is now keeping Aquaman 2 seperate from the DCEU; as a standalone sequel movie.
