The first film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU), it was directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screenplay by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel.

In March 2016, work began on a new version that would start a new shared universe featuring the non-Spider-Man Marvel characters that the studio possessed film rights to.

While exploring space for new habitable worlds, a probe belonging to the bio-engineering corporation Life Foundation discovers a comet covered in symbiotic lifeforms.

The Life Foundation recovers the other three and transports them to their research facility in San Francisco, where they discover that the symbiotes cannot survive without oxygen-breathing hosts, which often fatally reject the symbiosis.

Investigative journalist Eddie Brock reads about these human trials in a classified document in the possession of his fiancée Anne Weying, an attorney preparing a lawsuit defense for the Life Foundation.

She helps Eddie break into the research facility to search for evidence, and he learns that an acquaintance of his, a homeless woman named Maria, is one of the test subjects.

[28] A clip from the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), featuring Shameik Moore as Miles Morales and Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker, is included after the credits.

[35] Sony was actively developing Venom alongside direct sequels to Spider-Man 3 by July 2008, hoping the character could "add longevity" to the franchise in a similar fashion to Wolverine in 20th Century Fox's X-Men films.

He and Big Fan (2009) director Robert Siegel pitched an R-rated Venom film in the vein of The Mask (1994), but producer Matt Tolmach disliked their treatment.

[49] In June, Arad and Tolmach discussed Venom connecting to The Amazing Spider-Man, similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films crossing over in The Avengers (2012).

[43] In December 2013, Sony revealed plans to use The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) to establish their own expanded universe based on the Marvel properties the studio had the film rights to, including Venom.

[51] However, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperformed, and, with Sony "under tremendous pressure to perform [that had them taking] a hard look at their most important franchise", the direction of the shared universe was rethought.

[58] Venom was expected to begin a new shared universe independent of the MCU, and was initially aiming for an R-rating on a smaller budget, inspired by 20th Century Fox's success doing so with the X-Men films Deadpool (2016) and Logan (2017).

[59] Sony's director shortlist for the film was believed to include Adi Shankar, known for his dark, R-rated takes "on the properties he grew up on",[60] and Adam Wingard.

[65] The casting of Hardy, whose son was a big fan of Venom, happened quickly after he left director J. C. Chandor's Triple Frontier (2019) in April and Sony "saw an opportunity to court an in-demand talent".

[78] In July, Columbia Pictures president Sanford Panitch explained that Sony was not interested in producing "conventional comic-book movies" and was looking to give each film in the series a distinct style.

[8] Fleischer wanted Venom to stand out compared to other comic book-based films, and felt that tonally it would not remind viewers of the lighter MCU or the somber DCEU.

[102] Venom was one of the first films to take advantage of the new post-production facilities at Sony Pictures' Stage 6 building in Culver City, California, with two new theaters equipped for sound design using Dolby Atmos technology, two new stages for sound mixing with Avid Technology's Pro Tools workstations, and a theater set-up for remote visual effects and color grading review.

[109] The character model was flexible, allowing animators to scale Venom's head, adjust the length of his teeth, or even unhinge his jaw "like a trap door", depending on the pose required.

[105] Hardy initially planned to use performance capture to portray Venom on-set in addition to Eddie,[110] but this idea was abandoned due to the difference between his face and the character's.

One element that was suggested by the visual effects teams was to take advantage of the characters' liquid-like designs by having the two appear to merge and create "a swirling mass of symbiotic flesh, with the two humans revealed through the whirlpool".

Additional environment work that DNEG completed included the removal of Coca-Cola signs and CNN logos from the Atlanta-shot sequences, since San Francisco does not have those.

[112] For Anne's brief time as She-Venom, Franklin said that the various depictions of the character in the comics ranged from "demonic creatures with elongated teeth through to the extreme hypertrophied female form", with the film's version trying to balance being disgusting and "a little bit sexy", particular for when she kisses Eddie.

The physical releases featured deleted and extended scenes, making-of featurettes, and a way of watching the film called "Venom Mode" in which informative pop-ups appear on screen.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Venom's first standalone movie turns out to be like the comics character in all the wrong ways—chaotic, noisy, and in desperate need of a stronger attachment to Spider-Man.

[161] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe scored the film one-and-a-half stars and said it "saps the life force of almost everyone in it" including Hardy, Williams, and Ahmed, all of whose performances he criticized.

He also criticized Fleischer's direction as "unfocused" and Libatique's cinematography as some of the "dingiest" of 2018, but did feel that the scenes where Hardy and Venom talk while sharing a body were "reasonably amusing".

"[166] David Edelstein at Vulture said Hardy was the only reason to watch the film, and felt having Eddie and Venom share a body was "a good gimmick" that was executed better by Steve Martin in All of Me (1984).

[168] Time's Stephanie Zacharek described the film as "neither the most super-awesome Marvel movie nor the worst", criticizing the action and small roles of Williams and Slate, but praising the design of the symbiotes as "kind of neat to look at" and Hardy's performance as "fun to watch".

[172] Tumblr's Fandometrics analysis team, led by Senior Content Insights Manager Amanda Brennan, looked at "original posts, likes, reblogs, and comments" across the website's 440 million blogs, and reported that SymBrock was the most used ship name during the week ending October 15.