What happens when you cross a human with an alien symbiote not of this world? A third, bipolar entity capable of biting a man’s head clean off his shoulders, that’s what.
Caught up between those two figures is British thesp Tom Hardy, who’s about to pull double duty on this year’s Venom movie. Pegged for release in October, the Ruben Fleischer-directed spinoff has been pitched as something of a franchise-starter for Sony, given the studio has already drawn up plans for multiple Spider-Man spinoffs that focus less on Peter Parker and more on his fearsome adversaries prowling the streets of New York City.
And it all kicks off with Venom. Indeed, the dark and brooding anti-hero pic has been garnering a ton of buzz ahead of its debut later this year, but on a more personal level, the titular role offered Tom Hardy another chance to play two very, very different characters simultaneously.
Here’s what he told EW (h/t ComicBook.com) about bringing Venom to life:
Actually, the sound boys, [Patrick Anderson on sound playback and production sound mixer Michael B. Koff], they worked relentlessly to trigger [it] — I’d have to lay down the vocal for Venom in the morning and then play Eddie opposite in my earpiece, and whoever was working in the scene with me, had to hear Venom at the same time but then ignore that they’d heard Venom.
Embracing his inner demons, Hardy compared the dual role to a “Tetris puzzle” in that Venom‘s core cast had to make a mental note while filming that Eddie Brock’s alter-ego would be added in post-production.
And whenever I gave my cue line as Eddie Brock — this might not make any sense to anybody who’s not really techie and geeky about things like this like me — but Patrick would be under the stage queuing Venom accurately so I could cut across him and talk and argue with myself, and stuff like that. It’s a bit techie, it was fun. It was really, really good fun, and the sound boys, actually, to be fair, probably really play Venom. It’s my voice [laughs], but they play Venom.
Remember, the Venom we’ll see in October will be created entirely with CGI, and while some fans have expressed their concerns about said approach to the legendary Spider-Man villain, everything we’ve seen so far points to a fearsome and indeed faithful rendition of the Marvel Comics character.
It was more of the same stuff, when I did the Kray twins in Legend, that was again audio record of the brother who was gonna cause the most amount of damage in the room, so I would act the one who does the least amount of damage but then predict the damage that was coming, but the vocals had to be laid down before we set the scene.
He concluded:
Which means all the other actors had to know what the person in the room was gonna do, who wasn’t in the room when we filmed it, and then we put a double in there, so it’s a little bit like some kind of Tetris puzzle. It’s very geeky [laughs]. But I really enjoyed it, and no, it’s less complicated than it seems.
Venom makes a beeline for theaters the world over on October 5th, and it’ll light the fuse on Sony’s Spider-Man-less Spider-Man franchise. There has to be a better name for that, though…