‘Venom’ news: Tom Hardy using performance capture to bring symbiote to the screen

Filming recently begun on the upcoming Spider-Man spin-off Venom and news has come that star Tom Hardy will using performance capture to bring the popular Marvel villain to the screen.

Plot details are still scarce on Ruben Fleischer’s film will also star Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Jenny Slate – all in undisclosed roles.

Venom is an alien symbiote that had left Peter Parker once Peter realized it was turning him evil despite making him stronger and giving him unlimited web fluid and fused with a vengeful photographer named Eddie Brock.

The news comes via Andy Serkis in an interview to Yahoo!:

“The time has come that people understand that performance capture is a technology, not a genre of acting,” Serkis explained.

“Acting is acting, and the more actors – like Steve Zahn… and Karin Konoval (Maurice in War For The Planet of the Apes) – the more A-list actors that come on board, like Mark Rylance playing The BFG, or a lot of actors in the new Marvel films… Tom Hardy is playing a new character using performance capture. It all points up ‘what is the nature of acting?’ and there is no difference between acting wearing a costume and make up, or wearing a motion capture suit. That’s plain and simple, it just needs awarding bodies to understand that.”

Also set for the film is Carnage.

Carnage is Cletus Kasady, a serial killer who merged with the offspring of the alien symbiote Venom and resulted in an amplification of his already-psychotic nature. Carnage seems like a perfect fit for the “extreme” trend that permeated comics in the ’90s: he’s sort of like Venom, but blood red and much crazier and way more hardcore.

Venom will be directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) and will also star Slate (voice actor in Zootopia, The Secret Life of Pets, The LEGO Batman movie), Williams (Shutter Island, Manchester by the Sea), Ahmed (Rogue One, Jason Bourne, Nightcrawler), Reid Scott (Veep), Michelle Lee, Scott Haze (Thank You For Your Service), Kayko Thompson, Grace Wan, Jared Bankens, Apollo GT and Paul Pillsbury.

Venom opens October 5, 2018.