First look at Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock in ‘Venom’, 5 Symbiotes confirmed

Fans groaned as Sony dropped the first photo from Venom, the Spider-Man spin-off starring Tom Hardy (Mad Max Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises, Dunkirk) as titular anti-hero/villain.

Why the disappoint?

Hardy is seen only as Eddie Brock. No special effects, no drama, no hint at an alien symbiote. Just Hardy in a blue shirt with a book – check it out below.

That said, give the Internet pool of fandom enough time and yes, they’ve manufactured some rumors/hints from the text in the notebook:

The text is difficult to read, but it drops major clues as to the film’s plot.

“So how exactly does the Life Foundation go about testing its pharmaceuticals?”

“What about the allegations your Empire is built on?”

“That you recruit the most vulnerable of the volunteers for the tests that more often than not end up […] them?”

The Life Foundation first appeared in Marvel comics in 1988 in an Amazing Spider-Man issue created by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane. The group believed that the Cold War would end in a nuclear holocaust, and they aimed to keep their rich clients alive and safe in a giant fall-out shelter. To protect them, the Life Foundation used the Venom Symbiote to created five new creatures named Agony, Phage, Riot, Lasher and Scream.

So, here comes the fan theories of FIVE symbiotes.

Screenrant summarized: “Every one of those five symbiotes has become a recurring villain. The symbiotes also mutated, granting their hosts unusual powers. Scream could generate a so-called “sonic knife” and use her hair-like tendrils as a devastating weapon. Agony could absorb chemicals into herself (including Spider-Man’s webbing), and actually spit acid. Phage tended to form his symbiote into long, serrated blades, while Riot preferred hammers and maces. Finally, Lasher preferred creating tentacle-like tendrils on his back, whipping them out at his enemies.”

Riz Ahmed has already been confirmed as Carlton Drake, and his company has been reinvented as a pharmaceutical firm that’s conducting illegal tests. It seems likely that Brock will cause problems for Ahmed, and become an unwilling participant in Drake’s experiments.

Attendees of the Brazil Comic-Con got the first info from director Ruben Fleischer as he talked to them from the Venom set. The director told fans which comics he was following for the film (Venom: Lethal Protector, Planet of the Symbiotes), what it was like on set, what the new film will be like, and to talk up lead Tom Hardy.

Then the man showed up to promise to make the best film that they can do as well as apologize for not actually being there like they had planned on, as well as give them the first swag.

In a recent interview with MTV News, Venom producer Matthew Tolmach spoke about his excitement of having Hardy on board for the project. Tolmach says that he and his partner Avi Arad knew right from the beginning that the actor was the right person for the job to tell Brock’s story.

“You know, Tom… it’s like a masterclass watching him act every day and he’s such a risk taker and he loved this character. From the day that we first met with him, my partner Avi Arad and I… we found someone who just believed in this character entirely and yet every day pushes it to a place that us mere mortals would never expect it to go.”

Venom arrives in theaters October 5, 2018.