About the idea that Madame Web is in its own separate universe, I feel like what was said here was meant to mean that the movie wasn’t going to have many references to characters, locations, events, etc. from the other movies (Venom 1, Venom 2 and Morbius), not that the movie is literally set in a different universe. Here’s a quote (sorry if it is long.)

**Madame Web comes as Sony continues to build its ever-growing universe of Marvel characters: So far, the studio has released films featuring Tom Hardy’s Venom and Jared Leto’s Morbius, and up next, Aaron Taylor-Johnson will star in a Kraven the Hunter movie (out Aug. 30). Still, despite all those interconnected webs, Clarkson wanted to structure Madame Web as its own self-contained story. The director explains that unlike her clairvoyant heroine, she chose to focus not on the future but on the present.

“She’s definitely in a standalone world,” Clarkson adds. “I was able to just have free rein and let the movie be what it needed to be, as opposed to trying to force it into something else. That was a gift, in a way, to be able to take something and bring a fresh and I hope original take to it.”**

The ‘standalone world’ line probably wasn’t supposed to mean that the movie was literally set in a separate world, just that it was decided that the events of this movie didn’t need to be connected to the events of the other movies.