Sony Still Looking At Expanding SPIDER-MAN Movieverse Starting With Silver Sable

One of the goals Sony Studios had when it rebooted its Spider-Man franchise with in 2012 with The Amazing Spider-Man was to spinoff a number of the related heroes and villains that the studio owns the rights to into their own separate films. After Amazing Spider-Man 2 crashed and burned, leading to Sony forming a production pact with Marvel Studios to re-reboot the character, it was thought that the plan for spinoffs had been abandoned. But it looks as if they have only been placed on the back-burner for the time being.

Speaking on Popcorn Talk’s Meet The Movie Press YouTube series (around the 16:15 mark), former The Wrap editor Jeff Sneider revealed that he has heard that Sony still want to move forward with a based on the Spider-Man character Silver Sable. Reportedly, the studio is talking with screenwriter Abi Morgan (Shame, The Iron Lady) to take on the scripting chores fort he project.

For the uninitiated, Silver Sable is a mercenary who has both fought alongside and against Spider-Man. As the character has no superpowers, it looks as if Sony may be trying to capitalize on the popularity of the somewhat similar Punisher, who turned out to be the breakout character on the most recent season of Netflix’s Daredevil.

Sony’s previous plan had been to spin a number of films out of clues and setups seen in Amazing Spider-Man 2, with a film featuring the antihero Venom, one featuring the villain group the Sinister Six and some sort of female-led Spider-Man spinoff movie all in development. Could that previous female-led spinoff have been a Silver Sable film? Hard to say as some reports even had it as possibly being about a young Aunt May.

Sneider’s reportage does offer us our first possible hint as to the studio’s plans for an expanded Spider-Man cinematic universe, first confirmed by studio chief Tom Rothman earlier this week in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

Since you teamed with Marvel, do you plan to make a whole Spider-Man universe? Do you have plans for more work with Marvel?

Yes to both those questions. It’s been fantastic, our relationship with Marvel.

Sony’s current reboot of the Spider-Man franchise – Spider-Man: Homecoming, hitting theaters next summer – comes in the wake of an agreement with Marvel Studios where in the two entities will share the character. Tom Holland has already debuted on screen as Peter Parker, aka the amazing Spider-Man in this past May’s Captain America: Civil War. Marvel Cinematic Universe mainstay Robert Downey Jr will be crossing over to Spider-Man: Homecoming to appear as Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.

It certainly comes as no surprise that Sony is looking at exploiting their Spider-Man rights as best they can, and expanded cinematic universes are certainly big business right now. And this turns out to be a real plus for Marvel Studios as well. Given that Sony will now be introducing a number of new characters in their own Spider-Man films, Marvel may have the ability to cross them over to their Marvel Cinematic Universe as well. Could we see some of that in Marvel’s Phase Four films starting in 2021? We’ll keep watching.