One of the most popular characters from Marvel comics gets his own standalone film in Sony/Columbia Pictures’ VENOM.

The cast includes amazing talents like Tom Hardy (Eddie Brock/Venom), Michelle Williams (Anne Weying), Jenny Slate (Dr. Dora Skirth), and Riz Ahmed (Carlton Drake).

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Gangster Squad, 30 Minutes or Less) to talk about the antihero movie.

How valuable was it the experience of directing “Zombieland,” another film that is an adventure with funny elements, but also a darker edge?

Definitely, I wanted to make an entertaining movie for audiences to enjoy. “Zombieland” does that very well, that movie is a lot of fun. But there were many more challenges in this movie, because of a bigger scale, a CG character… crafting the relationship between Eddie and Venom… It felt like a nice stepping stone after learning so much with “Zombieland.”

What was the biggest creative challenge that Spider-Man’s absence represented?

In “Spider-Man 3” we saw an origin story for Venom that is closer to the comics, so we didn’t want to repeat any previously seen scene. Here, Spidey is fighting with The Avengers -who knows where- so we wanted to do a standalone story. The great thing is that the characters of Eddie Brock and Venom are more than enough for one movie, especially when you have an actor like Tom Hardy exploring their relationship. I think that we didn’t miss Spider-Man, but it would be very exciting to see those characters in the future go toe-to-toe.

Is this the same universe and timeline?

It’s hard to know. There are a lot of moving parts, to say the least. But it would be great to see Tom Hardy and Tom Holland facing each other.

This Eddie Brock, at the end of the film, seems to have a few things in common with Peter Parker. What could theoretically spark a conflict between the two of them?

The nature of Eddie’s dislike for Spider-Man, in the comics, is that he was writing a story and Spider-Man revealed that his information was inaccurate, and he was exposed as a fraud. One could imagine, hypothetically, a version where that is happening again. We haven’t talked about that, but I don’t think that it would be that hard to create an adversarial relationship between them. Peter is bright-eyed while Eddie is darker, so given those different energies I don’t think that they would get along.

Can you talk about the process of creating the way that Venom looks?

Everything was driven from the comics, especially his look. I pulled some of my favorite panels from the comics and gave them to the artists that created the 3D model. I wanted a version of the character that felt like he had jumped from the pages: the mass, the eyes, the mouth, the tongue… everything is so iconic about him. We wanted to bring him to life in a way that it would do justice to the comics and the fans. The obvious challenge was what to put in his chest, because we don’t have Spider-Man in our movie. We came up with the idea of these white veins that run through his body.

Venom also sounds great. When you hear him, even if you don’t see him, you can feel his presence.

Tom voices Venom in the movie and that was his creation. We wanted him to sound powerful, menacing, scary at times, but also funny, and he gets a lot of laughs in the movie. Tom would record Venom’s lines every day before shooting, and then he would listen to that audio through an earpiece, so he would able to react in real time to Venom talking to him. We had a filter to make his recording instantly sound like Venom, so he wouldn’t listen to his natural voice, but to an alien talking to him in his head while he was acting out the scenes.

There is a very powerful and cool action scene with Venom facing a SWAT team. Were there other films that served as inspiration?

Yeah, we looked at a bunch of fight sequences from other movies to get some great action moments. The driving factor of that scene is the smoke, that was the design principal. I don’t know if there is another movie that has an action scene like that in smoke.

Is the smoke a mix of practical and digital effects?

It’s a combination of both, yeah. A lot of it is practical, especially when he starts the fight, and then significantly enhanced in CG. It is way easier to add smoke than to remove it. I love that scene because you really feel the power of Venom, especially when he grabs that guy and whacks the other guys with him. I am very proud of that because it’s very cool, and I have never seen it in a movie.

In the second trailer we saw that moment where Venom utters the line “Rolling down the street like a turd in the wind.” Were you surprised of how much that line got people talking online?

We made the movie for audiences so we wanted to let everyone know that it is fun, entertaining, and that it’s OK to laugh. I think that face off scene is very funny, so the hope was to make clear that it’s not just a dark, menacing thriller.

I have a question about a literal headcount. How many heads does Venom eat in the movie? Is it me or he also eats an entire human body?

That’s the benefit of things happening off camera, that we will never really know. The first guy that shoots him with a shotgun… he definitely rips that guy’s head off. At the end, we don’t see that other guy anymore, and Venom is a hungry fella.

VENOM will be released in theaters on Friday Oct. 5.

 

When Eddie Brock acquires the powers of a symbiote, he will have to release his alter-ego “Venom” to save his life.