Tom Hardy’s Venom movie is a truly peculiar beast. Honestly, I’m still in a “I’ll believe it when I see it in cinemas” stage of pre-release scepticism for the film, a nominal Spider-Man spin-off which will presumably have Tom Holland‘s MCU-bound webhead anywhere near it. And yet: according to Total Film, Hardy is signed on for another two go-arounds as the symbiotic anti-hero.
Well, sort of. Hardy’s exact quote is that he’s “Open to whatever you want to do with it. We’ve signed up for three of them. So it’s very much an open case. We’ll see what people’s responses are to it.”
That sounds like a classic “Pay or Play” contract, a fairly common clause in modern franchise filmmaking, wherein the star is signed on for further instalments should it be financially lucrative to do so. If not, they still take home a considerable wage, without even making a movie!
Hm, maybe I should’ve persisted with the acting game after my starring role in the reception Nativity performance, instead of getting into the movie journalism racket…
Anyway, Hardy also dropped some interesting info about the film’s potential as an ongoing concern. After months of speculation, he more or less confirmed Venom is set in an entirely separate world to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“For Sony, it’s the Venom-verse launched in isolation, as it were,” he said. “We all prepped for it to be a standalone universe. So whatever Sony want to attach to it at a later date, it’s a fulcrum piece. But let’s see what happens when it lands.”
Where Spider-Man movie rights holders Sony teamed up with Marvel to bring Peter Parker to their shared cinematic universe with Captain America: Civil War, solo flick Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War, they retain the prerogative to use characters such as Venom on their own terms.
They’re also prepping films starring Spidey bit-players Black Cat, Silver Sable and Kraven the Hunter, the fates of which presumably also lies in how successful Venom is. They also have the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse coming up, which looks much better than the mouthful of a title suggests.
Venom is set to be released in the on October 5 2018.
