Tom Hardy fights back as Eddie Brock in a new Venom image

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Considering that SPIDER-MAN 3 didn't exactly make the best use of Venom, Sony's upcoming standalone film should hopefully go a long way towards giving us the anti-hero we know and love. Fingers crossed. Tom Hardy (DUNKIRK) will be playing Eddie Brock, a journalist desperate to get his career back on track after a recent scandal. While investigating the Life Foundation and its mysterious leader, Dr. Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), Brock is exposed to an alien symbiote which bonds with him and gives him extraordinary powers.

Total Film has unveiled a new image from VENOM which finds Eddie Brock discovering some of those new abilities while fighting off a few "mysterious assailants who are suddenly very interested in him." You can also check out the Total Film subscriber cover below as well.

The dual nature of the character certainly helped to attract Tom Hardy to the role. "For me, it was the multiple personalities, because to play that, on a kind of epic level, a superhero level, that was the big draw," Hardy said. "I was like, ‘This is a great character, because he’s a diverse antihero. He’s not a good guy, and he’s not a bad guy.’ He’s connected to this alien who’s not from this planet. They’ve got to figure out an ethical framework between the two of them, and neither of them are run-of-the-mill types. There’s this kind of Odd Couple [relationship] between the two of them. I enjoyed the Jekyll and Hyde nature of that, in a superhero world." Director Ruben Fleischer added that the reason why Hardy was a perfect choice for the role was that he "brings so much complexity, and I would say danger, to the roles and characters he plays. Those are two inherent qualities of Eddie Brock and Venom, the complexity and the menace. So getting to watch Tom live between these two characters who are sharing a body and having to navigate these two forces simultaneously was really impressive and fun to watch."

VENOM will hit theaters on October 5, 2018.