For years, fans have been looking forward to seeing a faithful take on the Spider-Man villain/anti-hero, Venom. Our first taste came in the unfortunate form of Spider-Man 3, wherein Topher Grace played a silly emo version of Eddie Brock. Not only did the film turn out to be a huge disappointment, but the inclusion of Venom felt like an annoying afterthought.

However, with Spider-Man now a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, rumors started to swirl around Tinsel Townthat Sony would be creating its own pocket universe, and that it would all be kicked off with Venom. A couple months back, we got an October 2018 release date, and rumors that Alex Kurtzman would be helming the project.

RELATED: Venom Standalone To Be An R-Rated Flick Separate From The MCU

The news, it turns out, was only half right. Variety is reporting that Ruben Fleischer, the man behind Zombieland. That’s not even the biggest news. Sony Pictures took to Twitter to announce that Tom Hardy would be portraying Eddie Brock in the dark adaptation. The tweet confirmed the October 2018 release date, and went on to state that production for the film is set to begin this fall.

Let’s start with Hardy’s casting. This is a brilliant choice. In the comics,Eddie Brock is usually shown as a buff, tough-as-nails journalist. This is what made the casting of Grace for Spider-Man 3. This seems to be the right choice to make. It’s faithful to the character, and gives credence to the idea that they’re respecting the source material.

Ruben Fleischer seems like a solid choice to helm the project. Between films like Zombieland and TV shows like Santa Clarita Diet, he’s proven to have an irreverent style that can work in concert with the source material. But who will be adapting the script? That will be Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner, who both worked on Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Pinkner also worked on the upcoming Dark Tower film. The style and tone will also largely be dependent on the script these two put together.

However, with Sony announcing the director and star this early on, one can expect they’re either pretty far into the script, or that they have huge faith in the talent involved.

What do you think? Are you excite to see Tom Hardy and Ruben Fleischer enter this Venom project? Let us know in the comments down below!

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SOURCE: Variety, Sony (via Twitter)