Tom Hardy Gets His First Film Writing Credit With 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage'

Tom Hardy: Actor, producer, and... writer? Is there truly nothing this Renaissance Man can't do? Not content to rest on his well-earned laurels after a string of roles involving weirdly iconic voices and tons of physicality, Empire brings us the unexpected news that Hardy will actually be getting a "Story by" credit for the upcoming, preposterously-named Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

In a change from the first Venom film, which memorably came out of nowhere to become a breakthrough box office success, Kelly Marcel is handling sole screenwriting duties as well as sharing story credit with Hardy. According to Empire, the creative partnership between Marcel and Hardy extends nearly 20 years. As Marcel herself says:

"This is new for him, to get credit, but it's not new for him to be this involved. He's absolutely 100 per cent committed to everything that he does.

He's married to Venom. He loves this character. He's very involved in what he thinks should happen."

This is somehow both hilarious and endearing, at the same time. Remember, we're talking about the comic book villain/anti-hero Venom here. To me, it sounds like the level of actor ownership of a role that would only develop over the course of, say, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy filming the Before trilogy with Richard Linklater off and on throughout their entire careers. Of course, both of those two actors eventually received screenplay and writing credits for Before Sunset and Before Midnight, respectively. Hardy, meanwhile, is beating them to the punch in terms of writing credit in his franchise of choice by approximately, oh, give or take a few decades.

We're not yet sure exactly what this will entail in terms of the final product, but it speaks volumes that this will be Hardy's very first writing credit on a feature film. Needless to say, this franchise is clearly Hardy's baby and it's always neat to see actors take the initiative to be committed to what could be (and probably still is, let's be real) little more than a paycheck gig.

Marcel goes on to detail Hardy's process, which is less the quill-and-ink method and more talking ideas through.

"He doesn't get a pen and write. We spent months breaking the story together on FaceTime, riffing on ideas, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't. Then I took everything we spoke about and holed up somewhere for three months quietly, knocking out a script."

Though I tend to be a killjoy by having reservations about the somewhat ironic, meme-heavy enjoyment of this whole Venom series, it's at least nice to know that Hardy is taking this as seriously as he can. Directed by Andy Serkis and also starring Woody Harrelson, the still ridiculously-named Venom: Let There Be Carnage is scheduled for a September 24, 2021 release stateside.