Spider-Man Franchise Will See Female-Driven Spin-Off In 2017
Sony's complete revamp of its Spider-Man franchise continues. First, the company moved The Amazing Spider-Man 3 back several years. Now, after Drew Goddard's Sinister Six opens in 2016, Sony is planning to release a spin-off film starring one of Spider-Man's female counterparts in 2017. There's no word on which character it'll be, though Spider-Woman and Black Cat are obvious options. Lisa Joy Nolan (Westworld, Pushing Daisies) has been hired to write. Read more about the female Spider man movie below.
Deadline broke the news and their story has a ton of info the Spider-Man franchise as a whole, including this major development.
If you're Sony and you're taking a pause from your main Spider-Man character to do Sinister Six, this movie and Venom, I really feel like the best two options are Spider-Woman and Black Cat. Spider-Woman for obvious reasons (she has the powers of Spider-Man, but is a woman), and Black Cat because it's a character that has already been introduced in the new storyline. You can see her above, played by talented actress Felicity Jones.
Because the woman who becomes Black Cat is already part of the story, making her own solo movie could not only give an exciting new context to Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It would also give Spider-Man himself a formidable ally/foe moving ahead, depending on how you wanted to use the character.
Another exciting development here is Lisa Joy Nolan. She's an accomplished writer, of course, having a script on The Black List, working on multiple TV shows and having a bigger role on HBO's upcoming Westworld show. But she's also the wife of Christopher Nolan's brother, Jonathan Nolan. Just this tiny, tangential connection to the Nolans in the Spider-Man universe is a cool piece of trivia.
With all the talk in recent weeks about Wonder Woman at DC and Black Widow at Marvel, who would have thought Sony would be first out of the gate with a female superhero movie in this new modern era? If the studio knows what's good for them, they will announce the character and other creatives behind this female Spider-Man spin-off ASAP just to lock in that precedent.
On the other hand, neither of the previous two films in this franchise have been particularly good. And while a female superhero movie is great on paper, a bad one could be extremely detrimental. If a Black Cat film fails, for example, Hollywood wouldn't blame the filmmakers. They'd blame the property.
What are your thoughts on this exciting development?