Tom Hardy set to play Marvel villain Venom in solo movie

Tom Hardy set to play Marvel villain Venom in solo movie

Tom Hardy is coming to the Marvel movie universe…. sort of.

Announced today via tweet above, the Mad Max: Fury Road and Inception actor will bring to life Venom, otherwise known as one of Spider-Man’s most iconic enemies. Hardy played Batman villain Bane in DC’s The Dark Knight Rises film, and was rumored to come back to DC in last year’s Suicide Squad until talks fell through.

Instead it looks like he’s going to be joining Sony’s little corner of the Marvel universe.

Sony is co-producing this year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, as the webslinger is currently licensed to them for film use. Venom is also a part of Sony’s licensing deal, but that doesn’t mean he’ll technically be in the MCU. Sony and Marvel have a strange relationship at the moment. Spider-Man is owned by Marvel, licensed to Sony Pictures, but “contracted” back to Marvel for film use. That’s not the same with Spidey’s universe of characters, as they fall under a side umbrella and the company can produce films based on those characters as they’d please. This is why we’re on the third iteration of Spider-Man already and a Black Cat & Silver Sable film is in production on its own with no MCU ties.

Venom’s status in the MCU is tenuous in that regards, as a solo film lets Sony mold and present the character however they’d like, perhaps even creating a film series if the first proves popular enough. And he never has to even connect back to Spider-Man in the first place.

We’re in bizarro world at the moment, so we’ll have to wait until the film is released in October 2018.