Venom: first trailer released for Tom Hardy's Spider-Man spin-off

The long gestating film of the ‘symbiote’ character from Spider-Man has revealed its first footage – though keeping viewers in the dark about Venom himself

The teaser trailer for Venom has crawled its way online.

The first spin-off movie in Sony’s proposed Marvel universe, Venom stars Tom Hardy as antihero Eddie Brock, whose body is possessed by the titular alien symbiote, giving him Spider-Man-like powers. Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer has directed the film, which is rumoured to be receiving an R-rating in the US, rather than the typical PG-13 rating received by most superhero films.

While Venom’s teaser trailer doesn’t contain any moments graphic enough to confirm an R-rating, its dark and sombre tone does suggest something more adult than the teen-movie spirit of the most recent film in the franchise, Spider-Man: Homecoming. Entirely missing from the trailer, however, is the film’s title character, with Brock only glimpsed in human form rather than in his full mutated glory.

One of the more popular characters in the Spider-Man comics, Venom has been a more marginal figure in the big-screen adaptations of the web-slinger, only making its debut appearance in 2007’s Spider-Man 3, where he was depicted by Topher Grace. A standalone Venom film has been in development for over a decade.

Venom is scheduled to be released in the UK and US on 5 October.

Guardian film

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