Sony to Add a Female Superhero Movie to Its Spider-Man Universe, Possibly Retool 'Spider-Man'

While Marvel Studios continues to print money with new franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy, Sony Pictures has been having trouble making a classic franchise work. The studio's hopes of turning Spider-Man into its own cinematic universe were damaged after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperformed at the box office and received overwhelming negative reviews. Sony announced last month that The Amazing Spider Man 3 would be delayed until 2018 and that we wouldn't see Sinister Six until November 2016.

Sony's dreams of a Spider-Man Cinematic Universe aren't dead yet.

Deadline reported on Monday that the studio was moving forward with its ambitious plans for the megafranchise, including a movie focused on one of the female heroes in Spider-Man's world, a Sinister Six movie with Doctor Octopus at its center, the revelation that the Venom movie would possibly be called Venom Carnage, and that the delay for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 could lead to a "revamped, re-suited and rebooted" movie.

OK, let's start with the female superhero thing. The idea of launching a franchise focused on a female superhero seems to be on every studio's mind. Marvel Studios has Black Widow and Ms. Marvel but hasn't announced a movie centered on either character. Warner Bros. hasn't given Wonder Woman her own franchise yet, instead sticking her in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Sony seems ready to make this jump, but with which character? If you're going based on the fact that her name has "Spider" in it, Spider-Woman would be the obvious pick for this honor. From what I've heard, though, Sony might not even have rights to this character and she may belong to Marvel Studios.

It was easy to miss, but The Amazing Spider-Man 2 gave us our best clue as to Sony's direction with a female superhero movie. Felicity Jones played a character named Felicia in the movie. She was Harry Osborn's assistant. In the Spider-Man comics, Felicia Hardy was the secret identity of the Black Cat, a burglar who also had an on-again-off-again relationship with Spider-Man. Yup, they hooked up. Sony's already laid the groundwork for the Black Cat. Deadline reports that this movie — with whichever female character — will hit theaters in 2017.

As for Doc Ock leading the Sinister Six, Deadline doesn't come out and call that news a scoop, but instead mentions pretty casually that the movie "revolves around all the villains of Spider-Man converging after the evil Dr. Octopus summons them," going on to list five other villains (Vulture, Mysterio, Electro, Kraven the Hunter and Sandman) would could make up the supervillain team of Sinister Six. There's a chance Deadline got this wrong, but mentioning Doctor Octopus as the leader of this team seems like a definitive step.

When it comes to retooling the franchise, I'm not quite sure what that means. You don't have two Amazing Spider-Man movies, a Sinister Six movie, Venom Carnage and a female superhero movie only to revamp and reboot The Amazing Spider-Man 3. If Sony can pull all that lead-up work off (which is still dubious) there's no way they'd scuttle it for a new version of The Amazing Spider-Man 3.