New Venom Photo Shows Closer Look At The Slimy Symbiote

On the list of comic book characters you'd never want to cuddle up to, Venom sits in the number-one spot. 

Entertainment Weekly has a new photo from Venom, the Ruben Fleischer-directed film starring Tom Hardy, and it gives fans the clearest look yet at the slimy symbiote. 

A full-body shot of Venom, the snap shows the amorphous alien entity standing in a convenience store, his jet-black skin and cloudy white veins glistening under the fluorescent lightning. His massive hand grips the throat of a thug, while his many-fanged mouth is seen curled up in a creepy grin. Factor in the shell-shocked store owner who watches the encounter unfold from behind the counter, and this new Venom image is striking in more ways than one. 

Check it out below. 

For anyone wondering why this photo looks familiar, we'll turn your attention to the newest trailer for the film. The EW-released image offers a peek at one of the trailer's sequences from a different angle.

In the footage, first shown at San Diego Comic-Con 2018, Hardy's Venom — who forms a parasite-host bond with the disgraced photojournalist Eddie Brock — snatches the same bearded crook by the neck and snarls, "We will eat both your arms, and then both of your legs, and then we will eat your face right off your head. You will be this armless, legless, faceless thing, won't you? Rolling down the street like a turd in the wind." (Bit of an overkill if you ask us, but then again, maybe Venom skipped breakfast that day and is just extra hungry for human flesh.) 

When the soon-to-be victim asks what the hulking creature is, he declares "we are Venom" and immediately makes good on his word. The camera then pans to show viewers that the scene went down inside a well-lit corner store — with the tiny, now horrified Mrs. Chen having witnessed the whole thing.

While this single shot is cool enough to leave a lasting impression and teases a super-tense scene, it will likely pale in comparison to the final product. Clearly, a ton of special effects and CGI work were required to bring the movie version of Venom, who isn't a carbon copy of the symbiote as seen in the Marvel comic books, to life. We imagine that an in-motion Venom moving across a giant theater screen could blow everyone away. 

But what about the level of violence that we know, thanks to the trailer, this scene features? Sony executives are reportedly gunning for a PG-13 rating for Venom rather than a hard R — so will Venom's limb-munching threats and his subsequent people-eating actions here be altered in order to achieve that goal? Fans of the notoriously brutal character will probably be pretty miffed if that's the case. 

Get the answer to that question when Venom is released in theaters on October 5.