The movie team at Sony has been making quite a few headlines lately with change-ups to the gender status quo. Over the weekend, it was the news that we could see an all-female team of Ghostbusters in the long-awaited third installment of that supernatural-comedy franchise, and now comes word that Sony is planning a female-led superhero movie set within its Amazing Spider-Man cinematic universe.
Oh, and as if that’s not enough of a conversation-starter, the same report also indicates that the upcoming Venom solo movie set within that same Spider-Man universe may have a very interesting title.
In a fairly lengthy feature on the future of Sony’s Spider-Man franchise, Deadline reports that Burn Notice and Pushing Daisies writer/producer Lisa Joy Nolan has been hired to write a script for a new film set within the Spider-Man franchise universe that features a female superhero as its protagonist. While the studio hasn’t identified which female character from the webslinger’s world will be the focus of the film, it’s targeting a 2017 release date for the project — which means things will need to move along quickly once the details are ironed out.
The Amazing Spider-Man franchise has been light on established female characters from Spider-Man’s universe thus far, with the studio opting to cut Mary Jane Watson’s debut from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and bringing the narrative arc with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) to a close after two films. However, the studio did introduce a character named “Felicia” played by Felicity Jones in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 that is rumored to be Felicia Hardy, the thief known as Black Cat in the Marvel Comics universe (pictured above).
Other possibilities could include Spider-Woman or the mercenary Silver Sable, both of which have had recurring roles in Spider-Man’s comic-book adventures over the years.
The site also reports that the Venom solo movie is expected to hit theaters in 2017 and could potentially be titled Venom Carnage — which may allude to the presence of another famous villain from Spider-Man’s universe. In Marvel’s comics canon, “Carnage” is the name given to an offshoot of the symbiotic alien that bonded with Eddie Brock to form Venom, except this one bonded with a murderous psychopath to form a nearly unstoppable killer that makes Venom look tame in comparison.
This new lineup of films means that fans can expect to see Drew Goddard’s villain team-up movie The Sinister Six in theaters in 2016, followed by the Venom solo film and the female-led superhero movie in 2017, and then The Amazing Spider-Man 3 in 2018.
Basically, the next few years are going to be busy for everyone associated with the big-screen iteration of the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler.
