More Spider-Man Rumours: Garfield Out, Venom Cancelled?

Hot on the heels of the surprising rumours that Marvel Studios and Sony may be working together on Spider-Man, it has now been claimed a radical overhaul of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ franchise may also be on the cards.

It was news that many of us never expected to hear when reports surfaced earlier this week that Marvel and Sony might possibly be nearing an agreement which would, at last, allow the character of Spider-Man to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

However, a further report on this matter at Badass Digest suggests this may mean major changes to Sony’s existing plans for building a Spidey-centric Cinematic Universe all of their own…

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The plan had been for Sony to follow up this summer’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ with a pair of spin-off movies, ‘The Sinister Six’ and ‘Venom,’ with further word that another film based around a female character associated with Spider-Man would also get a solo movie.

These would, in theory, pave the way to further ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ sequels with Andrew Garfield’s wall-crawler somewhere down the line.

However, Badass Digest claim to have heard from ‘insiders’ that the plan may have changed significantly - and this might not be good news for Garfield.

Unnamed sources claim that Sony is considering two main options; firstly, they may “soft reboot Spider-Man with ‘The Sinister Six,’ having a new actor playing a Spidey who works with the villains ‘The Dirty Dozen’ style to take down a larger threat.”

(Note: ‘soft reboot’ essentially means a film which introduces a new take on the character without literally going back to square one, e.g. ‘Batman Forever’ or ‘The Incredible Hulk.’)

Alternatively, the studio may be contemplating “(putting) Spider-Man on the shelf for four or five years (to) see if they can develop any of the side characters into their own franchises.”

On top of this, it is also claimed that “’Venom’is functionally dead again.”

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We should stress here that Badass Digest do not vouch 100% for the veracity of any these rumours – but it all does seem to indicate a general uncertainty on Sony’s part as to what to do next with a property which has been so valuable to them in the past.

On the one hand it is hard to fathom that ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ could be considered in any way a flop after making a little under $709 million at the worldwide box office (over $50 million more than ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ to date). Still, it does seem that the current incarnation of Spider-Man simply isn’t capturing the popular imagination the way it used to.

The notion of ‘Sinister Six’ and ‘Venom’ spin-off movies has always been a tricky one, as it essentially requires making the villains the heroes – but still, Spider-Man forming an uneasy alliance with his adversaries to serve the greater good might make for an interesting and different superhero movie.

It may disappoint some fans if this means the ‘Venom’ movie (which has been in development hell since 2007’s ‘Spider-Man 3’) is cancelled again – but then, it’s not hard to envisage that character being worked into ‘The Sinister Six’ as well.

Of course, it remains to be seen how - or if - any of this ties in with Marvel’s own alleged plans for Spider-Man, should they reach an agreement with Sony over the use of the character.

Our Spidey-sense tells us there’s a lot more yet to be heard on this matter - so keep your ears to the ground, true believers…

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Picture Credit: Sony