Knull's creators didn't know the infamous supervillain would feature in Venom: The Last Dance until everybody else did

Knull in Marvel Comics — (Image credit: Marvel Comics)

There's an action-packed new Venom: The Last Dance trailer in the wild and with it comes the revelation that infamous supervillain Knull will be making his big screen debut. Fans are excited to see this big bad – a relatively new addition to the canon, having only debuted in 2018 – but it seems like nobody thought to give his creators an advance warning...

Shortly after the trailer went live, artist Ryan Stegman tweeted: "Yes, I did co-create knull. No, I didn't know until today that he was gonna be in Venom: The Last Dance. Yes, I do expect to finally be able to afford that lazy river moat around my house"

The character's other co-creator, Donny Cates, meanwhile, shared an image, also on Twitter, that simply read "MONEY" in a familar, Venom-style font.

Knull in Venom: The Last Dance — (Image credit: Sony Entertainment)

Those posts could be read in a number of ways. Certainly, there's a long and unfortunate history of comics creators being poorly recompensed for their work when characters make it to the big screen, with both Ed Brubaker and Jim Starlin having previously spoken out about how little they were paid when Marvel Studios made use of the Winter Soldier and Thanos, to pick a couple of high profile examples.

With all that said, we don't know the financial details here and Stegman, for his part, seems excited by the news. He later posted to Instagram: "My co-creation KNULL is coming to the big screen in VENOM: THE LAST DANCE! When @dcates and I created this guy we knew WE loved him but had no idea how much the world would love him! Very excited!" Let's hope he can finally get that moat.

Venom: The Last Dance is in theaters on October 25. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2024 and beyond.

Want to know more about Knull and how he could appear in Avengers: Secret Wars? Here's our handy explainer.

Will Salmon is the Streaming Editor for GamesRadar+. He has been writing about film, TV, comics, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he launched the scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for well over a decade. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places too.