Remember the news earlier this year that Sony Pictures was developing a Venom movie? You know, the one that was booked in for an October 2018 release date? That’s it, the one that nobody was really at all bothered about. Well, consider our interest now piqued.

Sony has moved to break the huge news that Tom Hardy has signed on to star as Eddie Brock/Venom in the picture, with Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer to direct.

As well as mentioning how Hardy is a huge fan of this beloved comic book character, the studio fired out the below message to confirm the news:

Tom Hardy is Eddie Brock in #Venom, the upcoming film from Sony’s Marvel Universe releasing October 5, 2018 – production starts this fall. pic.twitter.com/OZQqDEvoum

— Sony Pictures (@SonyPictures) May 19, 2017

This wouldn’t be the first time that Hardy has played a comic book rogue, of course, with the Mad Max: Fury Road star having famously portrayed Bane in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

Now don’t get us wrong, we all love Venom here at Moonbase Alpha, but the reason that we were so non-plussed about this movie was due to the way that Sony were handling it. As in, the film was to exist in a newly-created Spider-Verse that didn’t actually have a Spider-Man, for Venom and the similarly-announced Black Cat and Silver Sable team-up movie will exist in a world that has no ties to Tom Holland’s Wall-crawler or the Marvel Cinematic Universe which he inhabits.

The studio had initially announced Venom several years ago, along with The Amazing Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 4, and fellow spin-off The Sinister Six, but those plans were all shelved when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a total flop. As such, Spidey was recalibrated and brought into the MCU last year with Captain America: Civil War. That and subsequent MCU Web-head outings were agreed as part of a deal between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios/Disney in which creative control (and profits!) are shared.

In a world where Deadpool and Logan have pushed the superhero/comic book movie dynamic to its extremes in terms of adult themes and edginess, going all-in on a dark and twisted Venom could well be a wise move for a film that many are cautious and uncertain about to begin with. Adding Hardy into the mix only furthers serve to grab the interest of those who are still yet to convinced by Sony’s recent plans.

The comic book roots of Venom can be traced back to 1984’s The Amazing Spider-Man #252, which saw Spidey wearing a new and swanky black costume that was essentially an alien symbiote. Down the line, once Parker realised the costume was causing him to act erratic and aggressive, the Wall-crawler got rid of the getup – only for the symbiote to bond with Eddie Brock. A photographer with a huge grudge against Spider-Man, Brock was the perfect host for the symbiote, and thus the two merged to become Venom. Initially depicted as a scary-as-shit villain who Spidey simply couldn’t escape, be it as Spider-Man or just as plain old Peter Parker, over the years Venom was depicted more as an anti-hero or even, dare we say it, a flat-out hero at certain points in time. And Venom wasn’t the only symbiote-based character to turn up in Spidey’s world, for the likes of Carnage and Toxin would follow down the line. In addition to that, the Venom symbiote and moniker itself has not just had Eddie Brock as its host, and more recent years have seen Mac Gargan, aka Scorpion, and Flash Thompson become Venom.

As ever, expect to hear a whole lot more on this as it all develops, but in the meantime you can catch the next outing for Tom Holland’s Spidey when Spider-Man: Homecoming hits screens in July.