Home Entertainment Tom Hardy to star in standalone Venom movie directed by Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer

Tom Hardy to star in standalone Venom movie directed by Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer

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When news broke a short while back that Sony were developing a standalone Venom movie (again!), I was a bit confused. I just didn’t know how it would all work as this Venom would in fact not have anything to do with current Spider-Man Tom Holland and his adventures in the Marvel Cinematic Universe nor will it be related to the previous Venom movie that was pitched as spinoff to the now defunct Amazing Spider-Man franchise. Well now I can add another emotion to the mix next to that confusion: Excitement. A whole lot of it.

Variety reported over the weekend that Sony has tapped Oscar-nominated Mad Max: Fury Road actor Tom Hardy to star as Eddie Brock in the standalone Venom movie. This was confirmed by a tweet from the studio which showed off Hardy sporting a Venom t-shirt and also confirmed its October 5, 2018 release date.

It’s also been revealed that Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer has been picked to helm. Fleischer is no stranger to the comic book movie genre as for a long time he was involved in early versions of the script for the upcoming Justice League. Hardy, having starred as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, also knows a thing or two about playing a comic book villain. That’s if Venom is a villain. The character’s complex history has meant that he’s played both sides of the moral divide quite frequently.

Even though he wasn’t technically part of it, Venom’s origin actually starts in Marvel’s 1984 Secret Wars crossover, which saw many of the Marvel heroes and villains transported to another planet and forced to battle each other. After his costume was ruined in battle, Spider-Man aka Peter Parker finds what he thinks to a new black suit, which appears as a ball that then surrounds his body. After he travels back to Earth though, it’s discovered that this new black costume is, in fact, a sentient alien symbiote which even takes control of Parker’s body while he sleeps at night and was trying to permanently bond with him. Eventually, he was able to expel the symbiote using its weakness to sonic vibrations.

However, the symbiote would then find Eddie Brock, a roided up journalist with a massive hatred for Parker who happened to be in the same church where the symbiote was driven out. Bonding with Brock and feeding off his hatred, the symbiote would call itself Venom and become a maniac supervillain with a penchant for actually devouring its victims. However, Venom retained some traits from its time bonded with Parker, the most obvious being its actual look. It also kept some of Parker’s more heroic tendencies, calling itself a “Lethal Protector” and becoming an anti-hero of sorts for a while.

Over the years though, the symbiote has changed hands (or is that bodies?) a number of times with the different hosts all adding their own morals or lack thereof into the mix. Most recently though, one of Parker’s childhood friends, double-amputee ex-military man Flash Thompson has taken control of the symbiote – more than other hosts before him – and used Venom’s abilities in a purely heroic fashion as a super soldier of sorts.

Just which version of Venom will be seen in the movie is uncertain, but I’m guessing it won’t be full on evil as that’s a bit of a hard sell to audiences to get behind. Then there’re also Sony’s plans to also develop a movie based on fellow Spider-Man villains Black Cat and Silver Sable. How the two movies will interact is completely unknown at this point, especially with their one common aspect – Spider-Man – actually being there.

 

Last Updated: May 22, 2017

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