VENOM VS CARNAGE Movie On The Way! Black Cat Or SpiderWoman Might Be Too

Sony continues to retool their approach to the Spider-Man film franchises. Several weeks after the announcement that Sinister Six will precede Amazing Spider-Man 3, Deadline is reporting that even more spinoffs are on the way. Considering how Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperformed, Sony is desperate to stay away from their titular hero for awhile.

According to the article, Sony is planning a female-led Spider-Man spinoff for 2017. Lisa Joy Nolan will write the script, with Avi Arad and Matt Tomalch producing. No other details were revealed about this movie, but there are certainly a lot of contenders for main characters. Jessica Drew, a.k.a. Spider-Woman, is the first that comes to mind, as she’s an established solo hero in Marvel Comics. However, aside from the similar name, she hardly has anything in common with Spider-Man, and Marvel Studios likely owns her film rights. If a Spider-Woman ends up being the lead, it will probably be another character with a completely different power set than Drew. The other most likeliest candidate is Black Cat, and considering Felicia Hardy was introduced in Amazing Spider-Man 2, she stands a better chance of being featured than Spider-Woman.

It’s commendable that Sony is putting a female superhero movie into production. Lucy reaffirmed that there’s a market for female-led action films, and if there’s one thing we learned over the weekend with Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s that lesser known comic characters can draw in the big audience. However, Sony isn’t Marvel Studios, and considering that their collection of characters are all connected to Spider-Man, it will be tough to establish spinoffs without including him. It’s the same problem that Sinister Six will likely have. If they want this female-led movie to be successful, they’ll keep the Spider-Man connections to a minimum. For instance, if Black Cat is the protagonist, set her up in Sinister Six, and then let her do her own thing in the solo movie. She may be one of Spider-Man’s primary love interests, but for her cinematic purposes, she needs to be separated from the wall-crawler as much as possible.

Deadline also reported that the Venom spinoff is still in production. Reportedly titled Venom/Carnage, the movie will supposedly be released in 2017 after the female spinoff. Venom has been a long gestating project at Sony, and with Carnage now added to the title, it looks like we’ll be getting a battle of the symbiotes. Unlike Sinister Six, Venom has proved in the comics that he works well as a solo protagonist, so beyond his origin, we’ll hopefully get a great Venom story without Spider-Man being involved, especially if OsCorp created the symbiotes in the movies. Anti-hero vs. serial killer. Sounds like it could be cool.

SOURCE: Deadline