With Sony releasing Venom in October, starring Tom Hardy, it's the perfect time to remind fans about the previous incarnation of Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace in 2007's Spider-Man 3, with an intriguing fan trailer. Grace's performance was in the news earlier this month, when the actor admitted he was surprised that Sony thought he was the right choice for Venom. The actor also added that he can't wait to see what Hardy does with this character, and while some fans are still unsure of this new project, it's possible they may respond to this version better than they did with Grace's incarnation.

While Spider-Man 3 still fared well at the box office ($336.5 million domestic, $890.8 million worldwide, from a $180 million budget), it was seen by some as a creative disaster. Grace's Brock was one of several primary villains, including Thomas Haden Church's Sandman, Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, and James Franco's New Goblin. Despite its box office success, Sony opted to reboot the entire Spider-Man franchise after Spider-Man 3, with 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man and 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but those were seen as creative and financial failures as well. Now Sony is giving Venom another shot, as the first spinoff in its growing Spider-Man universe, just 11 years after Grace first graced the screen as Eddie Brock.

This new fan trailer comes to us from YouTube user Darth Blender, who simply used the same audio track as the most recent Venom trailer, as well as snippets of Spider-Man 3 footage that actually blends quite well. Certainly, it's not an easy task to match an audio track with scenes that feature completely different passages of dialogue, and while there are a few mismatched sections, the footage does flow surprisingly well with this completely different audio track. You can watch the video in the section above.


Early box office projections for Venom claim the movie could set a new October opening weekend box office record, with a projected debut between $65 million and $85 million. On both ends of the box office spectrum, that projection would be more than enough to surpass the current October record holder, Gravity, which opened to $55.8 million in 2013. Those latest numbers were also nearly double the initial projections of $30 million to $50 million, which indicates that the buzz may be spreading as rapidly as the title's symbiote. The movie also won't have too much competition, only opening against Warner Bros.' A Star Is Born, starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. So, it will be interesting to see how the tracking numbers change over the next month or so.

While it's certainly natural to compare one big screen incarnation to another, the differences between Topher Grace's Eddie Brock and Tom Hardy's version seem almost too vast to even warrant a comparison. First and foremost, this new Eddie is much older, and as audiences have seen in the trailers, the symbiote itself actually communicates directly with Eddie, a sort of superhero version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Plus, fans can hope that Sony avoids any sort of awkward scene like the one in Spider-Man 3 where a Venom-infused Peter Parker tries to dance and "snap and point" his way through the Big Apple.

Release Date:

  • Venom (2018) release date: Oct 05, 2018