Director says the Venom film is based on two comic storylines

Venom is a Marvel Comics character who has a very strong tie to Spider-Man, so Sony's determination to do a Venom film that has no connection to the Spider-Man movies the studio is collaborating with Marvel Studios on is somewhat confusing to me. How can you tell the story of Venom without Spider-Man?

Well, we're going to find out how Sony intends to do that, because VENOM is currently in production with ZOMBIELAND director Ruben Fleischer at the helm. Tom Hardy plays the title character, doing a motion-capture performance to bring the monstrous, alien symbiote-coated sometimes villain / sometimes antihero to the screen.

While the Spider-Man-less origin of this version of Venom remains a mystery, Fleischer revealed some story details while making a live-via-satellite appearance at the Comic-Con Experience 2017 in São Paulo, Brazil this past weekend. According to the director, the screenplay written by Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinkner, and Kelly Marcel was primarily based on the six issue comic book mini-series Venom: Lethal Protector that was published in 1993, and a five issue story called Planet of the Symbiotes that played out in the pages of The Spectacular Spider-Man in 1995.

Collider tells us the Lethal Protector story begins with 

Venom and Peter Parker agreeing to leave each other alone as long as Venom doesn’t commit any more crimes, so Venom packs up and leaves NYC for San Francisco … Venom ends up teaming up with Spider-Man to tackle five new offspring of the Venom Symbiote: Scream, Phage, Riot, Lasher, and Agony. 

Planet of the Symbiotes tells the story of what happens when 

Earth is invaded by an army of symbiotes, with Venom teaming up with Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider to stop them.

The VENOM film is known to be set in San Francisco, and it sounds like we'll be seeing Hardy's Venom taking on multiple symbiote creatures in the city. Unlike his comic book counterpart, this Venom won't have Spider-Man's help when he goes into battle.

Hardy's co-stars in the film include Riz Ahmed, Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate, Reid Scott, and Scott Haze.

Venom was previously (and poorly) brought to the screen in 2007's SPIDER-MAN 3 (pictured above). Even though this project is questionable, there's still a chance it will be a better representation of the character than that was.

VENOM is scheduled to reach theatres on October 5, 2018.