It’s an interesting narrative in watching how Amazing Spider-Man 2 has played out. While it’s the lowest performing film of the five films that Sony has produced, it was given the nod this year by the studio as one of several works that helped to make a significant impact on the bottom line in making the company profitable. But the numbers and mixed fan reaction has Sony readjusting their plans for the property, even though they had penciled in dates for the third and fourth installments. The third film has been pushed to 2018 with no firm date yet while the Sinister Six movie by Drew Goddard has moved up to a November 11th, 2016 release date – which takes it out of the growing busy summer schedule.
Now Sony, who owns the film rights to the Spider-man universe which includes a lot of supporting characters, is looking to bring a female leading film out, which could land as early as 2017. Sony’s looking to be the leader in this as Marvel has slated several films through the next few years that aren’t lead by a female character/actor and Warner Bros. is moving slowly on its properties. That will give Sony an edge up in terms of PR – if it’s the right character. The company is bringing in Lisa Joy Nolan to write the script, which should be interesting since she has some good TV credits and is working on the HBO series Westworld. She also has a bit of a relationship with some other Nolan’s as she’s Jonathan Nolan’s wife. He happened to write The Dark Knight and his brother is naturally director Christopher Nolan.
That problem comes in what character to use. The best choice for many is to utilize Felicia Hardy, known as the Black Cat, and was cast in a cameo role in Amazing Spider-Man 2 by Felicity Jones. A lot of the female characters in the rights that Sony have tend to be more normal based, like Silver Sable, but there’s the potential for Spider-Girl as well, but man that name will be awkward when it comes to anyone outside of how classic comics worked. It’s still unclear of the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman is included in the rights and we’ve see Firestar mentioned a few times as well.
