Woody Harrelson is the latest actor to join Sony Pictures' upcoming Venom stand-alone film — because that’s a thing that’s still happening, we guess.
Harrelson, who recently appeared in this year’s War for the Planet of the Apes and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is in talks for an undisclosed role, according to Deadline.
Once Harrelson signs on, he’ll be reunited with Ruben Fleischer. Fleischer, who is directing the project, worked with Harrelson in 2009’s horror comedy Zombieland.
Woody Harrelson will join Tom Hardy, who is playing the title character of Eddie Brock / Venom. Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate, Riz Ahmed and Michelle Lee are also starring.
Venom is a character best known in the comics for his interactions and battles with Spider-Man. Venom, however, won’t feature Tom Holland's Spider-Man as this film is taking place in Sony’s stand-alone universe. Ever since loaning out the character of Peter Parker to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony has begun to assemble other characters from the comics for their own various projects — including Morbius the Living Vampire and Silver Sable / Black Cat.
Venom did have his own standalone in the comics, which is the route the film will likely take. Fletcher told Polygon that he was inspired by 1993’2 Venom: Lethal Protector and 1995’s Planet of the Symbiotes for Venom.
In addition, Andy Serkis, pioneer of motion-capture technology and star of the Planet of the Apes franchise, recently gave an interview with Yahoo! that said Hardy would be using motion-capture for the role. “Acting is acting,” he said, “and … the more A-list actors that come on board, like Mark Rylance playing The BFG, or a lot of actors in new Marvel films…Tom Hardy is playing a new character using performance capture.”
He went on: “It all points up ‘what is the nature of acting?’ and there is no difference between acting, wearing a costume and makeup, or wearing a motion capture suit. That’s plain and simple, it just needs awarding bodies to understand that.”
Venom is being written by Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner. Matt Tolmach, Avi Arad and Amy Pascal will produce. The movie hits theaters on Oct. 5, 2018.