Tom Hardy gets writing credit for 'Venom' sequel after months of FaceTime brainstorming

Tom Hardy is carrying Venom in more ways than one.

In the original 2018 sci-fi thriller, the 43-year-old actor played journalist Eddie Brock, whose body is inextricably merged with an alien symbiote named Venom.

Venom's infiltration of Eddie has nothing on Hardy's commitment to the role and franchise as a whole, as Venom: Let There Be Carnage marks his first-ever writing credit ("story by").

"[Hardy] doesn't get a pen and write," Kelly Marcel, a longtime collaborator of Hardy's who wrote the screenplay for both Venom movies, told Empire. "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."

Marcel added: "This is new for him, to get credit, but it's not new for him to be this involved. He's absolutely 100 percent 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."

Woody Harrelson and Michelle Williams will return as Hardy's co-stars, but there was a directorial change between Venom and Let There Be Carnage. The first was directed by Ruben Fleischer, the second by Andy Serkis. The Hollywood Reporter first broke news of the swap in August 2019.

The appetite for more Venom is ripe, regardless of who is behind the scenes, as evidenced by the $856 million global box office haul from October 2018 to January 2019. Let There Be Carnage will hit theaters Sept. 24.

Watch the official trailer from Sony Pictures below.