Venom is a 2018 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel[5] and Tencent Pictures, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is the first film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) and is directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screenplay by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel. It stars Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock and Venom alongside Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, and Reid Scott. In the film, struggling journalist Brock gains superpowers after becoming the host of an alien symbiote, Venom, whose species plans to invade Earth.
After Venom’s appearance in Spider-Man 3 (2007), Sony attempted to develop a spin-off film based on the character but it did not move forward due to issues with Sony’s ongoing Spider-Man franchise. In March 2016, work began on a new version that would start a new shared universe featuring the non-Spider-Man Marvel characters that the studio possessed film rights to. Sony also intended for Venom to share the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), but ultimately distanced the film from Spider-Man. In March 2017, Rosenberg and Pinkner were set to write, with Fleischer and Hardy added in May. Filming took place from October 2017 to January 2018 in Atlanta, New York City, and San Francisco. The film was primarily inspired by the comic book miniseries Venom: Lethal Protector (1993) and the story arc “Planet of the Symbiotes” (1995).
Venom premiered at Regency Village Theater on October 1, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 5, 2018. The film received generally negative reviews from critics for its narrative, inconsistent tone, and lack of a stronger connection to its source material, while Hardy’s performance received mixed reviews. The film was a box office success, becoming the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2018 with over $856 million worldwide and setting several box office records for an October release. A sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, was released in October 2021, while a third film is in development.