The Spider-Man 4 rumors have been picking up steam over the past few weeks, as Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios (hopefully) get closer to making some kind of official announcement regarding the No Way Home follow-up.
Depending on what ends up being revealed in the trailers, this latest rumor may not turn out to be a major spoiler, but we're being careful just in case it is something that's kept out of the marketing.
According to MTTSH, Venom will appear in the fourth Spider-Man movie, but won't be the "main villain." There's no mention of Tom Hardy, so there's always a chance the Venom symbiote will take over another host.
Peter Parker himself, perhaps?
This would back up a previous rumor that the piece of the alien symbiote left behind at the end of No Way Home will factor into the plot, but would it be a smart move to revisit "Evil Peter" from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 when fans really want to see Spider-Man vs. Venom?
That face-off could always be saved for a future movie, or course, and there is talk of Sony and Marvel planning another full trilogy of films.
We should learn at least a little more once the project is made official. Is that announcement imminent?
Rumors aside, we still know very little about how Spider-Man 4 is shaping up. Sony's Tom Rothman and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige are believed to have had some disagreements when it comes to the overall plot, with the latter hoping to scale the Multiverse elements back for a smaller story. Rothman, meanwhile, is said to want to capitalize on No Way Home's success by bringing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back as their respective takes on Peter Parker.
Holland will, of course, return as the MCU's Spidey alongside Zendaya as MJ, but the actor is believed to be "growing wary" of playing the iconic hero, so this could be his final solo outing as the wall-crawler - though he will almost certainly play a part in one of both of the upcoming Avengers films.
"We have the best in the business working toward whatever the story might be," Holland said in a recent interview. "But until we’ve cracked it, we have a legacy to protect," Holland explained. "The third movie was so special in so many ways that we need to make sure we do the right thing."
No Way Home scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers are currently working on the script, but we still don't know which of the Wall-Crawler's fearsome foes will be causing problems for Peter and co. Most of Spidey's major bad guys have already been utilized in previous films (Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, etc), but a recent rumor claimed that the still untitled sequel will feature a villain we haven't seen in live-action yet.