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

“The time has come that people understand that performance capture is a technology, not a genre of acting,” says Andy Serkis. 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’, deserve awards recognition. Serkis runs performance capture studio The Imaginarium wholeheartedly and supports the idea. However, during his paragraph on how performance capture is inviting award-winning actors, he mentions Tom Hardy’s role in Venom.

“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.”

Just earlier today the first image of Hardy on set appeared, with everyone assuming he’d be playing a live-action character, it’s a new challenge for the actor but we’re unsure on whether this just means Hardy will play the ‘Venom’ character as performance capture and still play Eddie Brock (his alter-ego) in live action.

You can see the first image of Tom Hardy on the set of Venom here. Venom is set for release October 2018.