Sony Announces 'Venom' and 'The Sinister Six' Spider-Man Spinoff Movies

Sony announced on Friday that Venom and The Sinister Six Spider-Man spinoff movies are on the way. News broke last month that Sony was planning to create its own Spider-Man Cinematic Universe, matching what Marvel Studios had done but with characters connected to Spider-Man.

According to Sony's press release, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Ed Solomon will write the screenplay for Venom, with Kurtzman directing. Drew Goddard, who already has his hands full writing Marvel's Daredevil Netflix series, will write and direct The Sinister Six. Sony also officially announced The Amazing Spider-Man 3 for June 10, 2016.

“The Spider-Man film franchise is one of our studio’s greatest assets. We are thrilled with the creative team we have assembled to delve more deeply into the world that Marc, Avi and Matt have begun to explore in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. We believe that Marc [Webb], Alex [Kurtzman], and Drew [Tolmach] have uniquely exciting visions for how to expand the Spider-Man universe in each of these upcoming films.” 

The biggest question that this news raises is how it will impact Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man trilogy. Sony's press release says The Sinister Six will focus "on the villains in the franchise." Everything we've been seeing from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has pointed to the Sinister Six eventually appearing in Webb's movies, which up until this week, we thought was going to be a quadrilogy. With Webb now only planning three movies and Andrew Garfield says he has nothing to do with The Amazing Spider-Man 4, has Sony made the decision to hold onto the Sinister Six team-up for its own movie?

Another thing to wonder about is if the news that we're getting a Venom spinoff forces Webb's hand to introduce Spider-Man's black suit in The Amazing Spider-Man 3. Introducing the symbiote suit then would allow the franchise to have that plot thread while not requiring Webb to worry about actually using the Venom character. Unfortunately, the black suit's presence in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 would be another huge similarity to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, as Raimi used the black suit in his third Spider-Man movie.