Tom Hardy’s Venom is a performance capture role, reveals Andy Serkis

The days of Christopher Reeves, Michael Keaton prancing around a film-set dressed as superheroes are well gone. These days it’s all about CGI, so it seems Tom Hardy‘s Venom will be performance capture.

The news was revealed by Breathe director Andy Serkis, who just happens to be a pioneer in performance capture too. This will also the first time the actor will play a digital character on the big screen

Talking to Yahoo Movies about his directorial debut Breathe, the conversation turned towards whether performance capture roles, like Gollum or Caesar in ‘War For The Planet of the Apes’, deserved awards recognition. Serkis, who runs performance capture studio The Imaginarium wholeheartedly supports the idea, letting slip the ‘Venom’ secret mid-conversation.

“The time has come that people understand that performance capture is a technology, not a genre of acting,” Serkis explains in our video above.

“Acting is acting, and the more actors – like Steve Zahn… and Karin Konoval who plays Maurice in ‘War For The Planet of the Apes’ – the more A-list actors that come on board, like Mark Rylance playing The BFG, or a lot of actors in the new Marvel films… Tom Hardy is playing a new character using performance capture. 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 set to be directed Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer and today (24th October) marks day one of principal photography.The interview suggests Marvel has sought out Serkis wisdom and experience as he’s currently only involved in Marvel’s Black Panther. Hardy will face a new challenge in acting digitally, but he’s learning from a master who surely deserves awards glory.

Venom is set for an October 2018 with Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, and Jenny Slate co-starring.