Venom first-look: Official image of Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock revealed

Sam Ashurst
·Contributor
Tom Hardy hopes to lay the ghosts of ‘Spider-Man 3’ to rest with an audacious new vision for Marvel villain Venom. ‘Zombieland’ director Ruben Fleischer directs an all-star cast that includes Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Jenny Slate.
Tom Hardy hopes to lay the ghosts of ‘Spider-Man 3’ to rest with an audacious new vision for Marvel villain Venom. ‘Zombieland’ director Ruben Fleischer directs an all-star cast that includes Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Jenny Slate.

It might not be out until October, but the Venom hype train has officially started, now we’ve had our first proper look as Tom Hardy in character as Eddie Brock, the titular anti-hero’s human side.

The image comes from IGN, and it’s pretty different to the comic-book iteration, with Hardy’s Brock less bulky than previous takes – and with a weird hippy bracelet taking some of the edge off the character.

IGN has also made available previously exclusive footage from the Brazilian Comic Con Experience, where Hardy and director Ruben Fleischer first teased Venom to fans.

Quizzed about which iteration of the murderous symbiote we’ll be getting in October, Fleischer said: “We want to be as true as possible to the comics with our film, but our story is primarily based on the ‘Lethal Protector‘ and ‘Planet Of The Symbiotes‘ books.”

That’s an interesting combination. Lethal Protector is a bold place to begin Venom’s story, mainly because it concluded an entire era of stories, rebooting the character from Spider-villain to anti-hero.

We’re not sure how Spider-Man will fit into the Venom-verse (thanks to complex contractual obligations between Marvel and Sony with regards to how all this stuff fits into the MCU), but this is one way to keep them apart – the series saw Spider-Man and Venom striking a deal, keeping them in separate cities (Peter in New York, Eddie in San Francisco) – it could be that the studios have made their own version of this deal.

Weaving in ‘Planet Of The Symbiotes’ is also interesting – it revolves around an invasion of symbiotes (the alien species Eddie Brock uses as his costume) with Venom teaming up with Spider-Man to stop them. Again, with no Spider-Man in the film, they’re going to have to tweak that premise.

Still, Fleischer’s excited. “I can promise you badass action, Venom’s dark humour and I can also promise you an absolutely stunning performance by Tom Hardy,” he said.

Audiences will be able to decide for themselves when Venom‘s released in the UK on 5 October.


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