Venom's symbiote host, Eddie Brock, was originally set to appear in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man back in 2002, and the actor cast for the role shares some details. Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man was a cultural phenomenon when it was released on May 3, 2002, and at the time was the biggest opening weekend of all time for a movie and the highest-grossing film at the domestic box-office, beating out Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Building off the success of Blade and X-Men, Spider-Man really kicked off the modern superhero movie boom that audiences are still enjoying today.
The first Spider-Man movie is filled with plenty of Easter eggs of the wider Spider-Man comics mythos for fans to look over, hinting at what future films could have been. The Oscorp scientists, played by Ron Perkins, that Norman Osborn kills after receiving the Goblin formula is named Mendel Stromm, who in the comics is the villain Robot Master. Curt Connors is nam-dropped before his first on-screen appearance in Spider-Man 2 played by actor Dylan Baker. The first scene in the Daily Bugle has a Robbie (Bill Nunn) reference that Daily Bugle photographer, Eddie, hasn't been able to get a good photo of Spider-Man, a clear reference to long-time Spider-Man nemesis Eddie Brock, aka Venom. Yet, this Eddie Brock would not have looked like Topher Grace.
Actor RC Everback took to his personal Twitter to showcase the reference photo that the Spider-Man movie producers used to cast him as Eddie Brock, comparing how he looks now. The photo is Todd MacFarlane's drawing of Eddie Brock. Everback indicates that he had a scene alongside Tobey Maguire, J.K. Simmons, Bill Nunn, and Elizabeth Banks that was then cut from the finished film.
Eddie Brock would later appear in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy in Spider-Man 3 played by actor Topher Grace. In Spider-Man 3, Eddie Brock appears to be a new photographer that neither Peter Parker nor anyone at the Bugle has met before, so the Eddie referenced in the first film is just another unrelated photographer. The Eddie Brock of that film draws more from the Ultimate incarnation of the character, even down to the naming being Eddie Brock, Jr. The ultimate version of Eddie Brock hadn't even been introduced in the comics by the time the first Spider-Man was released, so the producers naturally would have drawn inspiration from the original '90s incarnation of the character.
Everback appears to join a select group of performers cast in high-profile comic book roles that got cut from the final film, having company that includes Wayne T. Carr as John Stewart in Zack Snyder's Justice League and Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The deleted scene of Everback as Eddie Brock has never been released on any form of home video, and there is no context to exactly what the scene would have pertained to. Yet, with the 20th anniversary of Spider-Man coming up and the rumored appearance of Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it could be time for a special home video release for the iconic film.
Source: RC Everback