Perhaps appropriate for a film that seemingly revolves around two characters fusing together to become a third, Venom has rolled out a pair of HD pics – one for Eddie Brock, and the other for his inky-black alien symbiote.
Arriving by way of Entertainment Weekly as part of the outlet’s ongoing Comic-Con preview (Godzilla! Doctor Who! Fantastic Beasts!), below you’ll see Tom Hardy’s down-on-his-luck reporter, Eddie Brock, being interrogated by Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) of the Life Foundation. The other pic is presumably pulled from the moment when Brock becomes infected by the alien parasite, before unleashing chaos upon anyone who dares get in his way.
And best of all? Both characters will be voiced and performed by Tom Hardy, and director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), for one, is a big believer in the actor’s dual performance:
Usually a human gets imbued with powers or an alien comes from outer space and has to figure out how to live on our Earth. But this is really about a relationship between two people who have to work together to create this hybrid symbiotic relationship.
Indeed, this dual setup is part of the reason why Tom Hardy was so intrigued by Venom in the first place; he may be a Marvel Comics character, but everyone’s favorite alien symbiote is a far cry from the costumed crusaders populating the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Here’s what Hardy told EW:
It’s a bit like Ren and Stimpy, you know? They have different sounds. I always saw Venom as sounding like a James Brown lounge lizard, and Eddie Brock is kind of… — he switches to an aw-shucks American accent — “I don’t know, an everyday kind of guy. But he’s inherited this massive ego, this beast. There’s that biting-off-heads issue, which is not what you would expect from, say, Captain America taking down a crook.
Venom will be unleashed upon the moviegoing masses on October 5th, and only then will we know if Sony’s fledgling Marvel Universe is more MCU and less Dark Universe. Other Spider-Man spinoffs in the works, meanwhile, include Morbius, Silver & Black, Silk and a film dedicated to Nightwatch.