Riz Ahmed is in talks to star in 'Venom'.

Riz Ahmed

Riz Ahmed

The 34-year-old actor looks set to star alongside Tom Hardy in the hotly-anticipated Sony motion picture, a spin-off of the Spider-Man franchise.

Sources told Variety that Ahmed will play a popular Marvel Comics character should his early discussions go well.

Sony hasn't commented on the speculation, and the company has previously insisted 'Venom' will not be a part of the Spider-Man film franchise, but will instead be seen as a standalone movie.

Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach will produce the film from a script written by Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinkner and Amy Pascal.

The character Venom was previously portrayed by Topher Grace in May 2007 movie 'Spider-Man 3', which featured Tobey Maguire as the titular superhero.

Villain Venom appears in the Marvel Comics and is also known as Eddie Brock, a freelance photographer when Spider-Man first appears in New York.

Ahmed is one of the most in-demand actors around at the moment after starring in sci-fi blockbuster 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story', drama 'City of Tiny Lights' and 'Una', which is based on the play 'Blackbird' by David Harrower.

What's more, he appeared in 'Jason Bourne' opposite Matt Damon, and recently credited his role as an assistant to Jake Gyllenhaal's unscrupulous news videographer in 2014's 'Nightcrawler' for showing the world what he is capable of.

He said: "I don't think anyone wants to be reduced to their skin colour, their height or their bra size. People want to be seen as people."

Ahmed also admitted it was a "new experience" having so much attention after starring as Bodhi Rook in 'Rogue One'.

"It's certainly a new experience for me - to have so much out around the same time. And for it to be seen by so many people because of the scale of some of those projects. I'm more used to having an indie film out every two years."

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