Getty/SonySigning on, normally in the usual sense of the words, is not good news. It suggests you’ve just lost a job, but in this case, with the prefix ‘Tom Hardy’ and the suffix, ‘Three Venoms Films’, well, let’s not expect to see our favourite actor down at the Job Centre anytime soon.
Ah, Tom Hardy, the man who can melt hearts from behind a Bane mask or a pilot’s oxygen mask or that gimp-resembling mask he had on at the start of Mad Max: Fury Road. The guy’s a champ. Even as Alfie Solomons, Thomas Shelby’s nemesis-turned-matey-business-partner-turned-nemesis, he had an endearing ‘yeah, go on then’ quality.
So with Sony Pictures’ – it’s not in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but I can’t be bothered to prattle on about comic book film contract complexities – release of Venom flying in to cinemas in October with alien symbiote on a motorbike like ease, we’re pretty excited to see what’s going to happen when Hardy picks up the mantle of Spider-Man’s frenemy/standalone anti-hero.
This trailer puts the last sentence into context if you’ve been under a rock for the last few months:
And with people around the world falling hook, line and sinker for big budget, multi character-arc, multi-universe movie franchises *shudders at that term* we’re beside ourselves because our Tom has confirmed he’s signed up for a multi-movie deal.
Trilogies, they almost pale in insignificance when beside a 20-strong unit, but as Ant-Man proved, it’s not the size that counts, rather how you use it.
In an interview with Total Film – reported by ComicBook.com – Tom revealed:
I’m open to whatever you want to do with it. We’ve signed up for three of them. So it’s very much an open case. We’ll see what people’s responses are to it.
I think it’s an awesome character. I love playing both of them. It’s an amuse-bouche, and for Sony, it’s the Venom-verse launched in isolation, as it were.
GettyAnd what an ‘amuse-bouche’ Venom looks like it’s going to be. Digging into the darker side – if you don’t count Thanos ‘wiping out’ half of all existence – of comic book territory, Sony are venturing into territory Deadpool has helped prove can be critically and commercially successful.
What can we expect from Venom then? Well, as the trailer suggests, some bloke getting a bit of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park style action in the form of journalist turned alien co-dependent relationship, turned gory.
Sony PicturesTaking inspiration straight from the comics, director Ruben Fleischer has said he always envisioned the movie as something violent and vicious.
He told ComicBook.com:
Our movie wants to honour the comics as close as we can tonally. In the comics, he bites people’s heads off and eats brains.
It would be weird to make a movie with Venom if he wasn’t doing that. We tried to honour it as closely as possible.
This is definitely a darker, more violent, more vicious Marvel character than I think anyone’s ever seen before.
Sony PicturesAdd on top of that to the rumour mill how all round legend, Woody Harrelson, fired up when he mentioned his appearance in the film Collider reported:
Well, you know, Ruben Fleischer did Zombieland, directed it, so that was a big part of it. And also, Tom Hardy, I really respect and think he’s one of the great actors. So that, coupled with what is a really wonderful script, I felt like I kind of should, you know?
Roll of the dice, because I’m just … I’m in a little fraction of this movie, but I’ll be in the next one, you know? So I haven’t read that script, but anyways, just rolled the dice.
And well, sod summer, autumn can’t soon enough, and whenever the rest of the Venom movies come out.
Venom will be released in UK and US cinemas on Friday October 5
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Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.