If a photograph Tom Hardy shared on Instagram yesterday is anything to go by, it would appear that a script for the third entry in the Venom saga is already in the can.
The cryptic post is simply a photograph of the front page of a script with the title redacted by a hand-drawn doodle of the interminably ravenous symbiote himself.
The first blink-and-you’ll-miss-it teaser for Venom’s third big-screen outing came during Sony’s Closing CinemaCon Reel last April, but Venom also put in an appearance during the end credits of Spider-Man: No Way Home leaving audiences wondering if a Spider-Man/Venom crossover was on the cards. Given the latter, a number of people read started speculating that Hardy’s doodling may actually be hinting towards a crossover film, saying that the red tongue, which appears to curl towards the end in an “s” shape may be referring to you know who.
Regardless of whether there is any truth to these theories or not, what is now certain is that Hardy has once again devised the story with writer Kelly Marcel, with the latter also writing the screenplay.
The first two films, starring Tom Hardy as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, who ends up playing host to Venom, an alien symbiote that bestows him with superhuman abilities, have grossed a combined total of US$1.4 billion worldwide to date and it was only really a question of time before the third entry in the saga was going to be confirmed, what with the last film’s mid-credits twist and his appearance in one of the Spider-Man No Way Home mid-credit stingers.
Next up for Hardy, is Gareth Evans’ (The Raid) British action thriller Havoc which follows a detective who must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue a politician’s estranged son, while untangling his city’s dark web of conspiracy and corruption. The film also stars Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker, Luis Guzman, Jessie Mei Li and Richard Harrington and is set to release on Netflix under an exclusive deal Evans has entered into with the streaming service.
