Earlier this week, the new trailer for Venom: The Last Dance revealed that the character’s ultimate adversary, Knull, will be in the movie. The villain, who was created in 2018 by writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman, is making his first live-action appearance. And both creators would very much like to be paid for that.
On social media, Stegman noted that he had not received any advance notice about Knull’s cinematic debut while jokingly speaking about what he would use his share of the money for the character’s appearance.
Cates had a more concise response. He flipped the Venom logo so it looks like it spells out “money.”
Cates and Stegman introduced Knull as a cosmic god who created Venom’s symbiote race before his creations turned against him and imprisoned him for ages. Knull was eventually used as the primary villain in Cates and Stegman’s King in Black crossover in 2020. Last year’s Venom-centric Spider-Man 2 video game didn’t feature Knull, but his insignia was included in the game which seemingly teased his existence.
Marvel does reportedly have a policy in place to pay creators when characters that originated with them are used in film or television projects. A 2022 story in The Hollywood Reporter suggested that although the initial contracts called for $25,000, the payment shrank down to $5,000 for each of the creators of Yelena Belova, Florence Pugh’s character in Black Widow. It’s unclear if those terms remain, or if they’ve been updated since then.
Venom: The Last Dance will hit theaters on October 25.
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