- YES FOLKS, THIS IS WHAT SONY'S ORIGINAL PLANS MIGHT HAVE POSSIBLY LOOKED LIKE -
THE SINISTER SIX - Now this spin-off would've been directed by Drew Goddard, the visionary behind The Cabin In The Woods, the original showrunner/director behind Netflix's Daredevil, he's also the same guy who science'd the shit outta The Martian, found his footing with the found-footage movie Cloverfield, and helped write a 2-hour Pepsi commercial called World War Z. Drew's Sinister-6 movie would've seen the likes of Otto Octavius, Adrian Toomes, Flint Marko, and Kraven the Hunter teaming up based on a shared hatred for a certain arachnid do-gooder, and battling Happy Madison's direct-to-Netflix spaghetti western The Ridiculous 6 in a copyright infringment lawsuit. Of all the problems people had with this project being announced, I guess the most reasonable gripe is that a bunch of old white dudes wearing mech-suits don't make for very compelling protagonists, even if they did end up throwing Black Cat in there, too... I mean does everything have to be like The Avengers? Five guys and a girl, aren't we missing something? Maybe a pizza place? Drew and Joss Whedon do go way back though, all the way back to Buffy, so I can see why Goddard might wanna steal back some of that thunder, but then again, wasn't the monumental success of Avengers kind of the whole reason Sony's franchise tanked after they pulled a complete 180° turn with the tone of their universe? "The Avengers performed better than Batman? Quick, we need to introduce more characters! Brighter costumes! Dryer humor!" "But sir, didn't we just spend an entire movie establishing a dark tone? And aren't we building towards the death of a high school student in the prime of her life?" "You're fired! Someone get me the guys who did Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, they'll write anything we tell them to. Remember Mudflap and Skids? Ahahaha, racism."
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 3 - Originally scheduled to come out this summer then pushed back another two years and eventually cancelled, the general consensus behind this project is that nobody in their right mind wanted to take part in a sequel that picks up the pieces after TASM2, not Andrew, not Emma, and especially not the fans. Too many plates left spinning from the last one—or better yet—the plate-spinner grabbed his coat and left the room so all the plates shattered onto the floor, like some kind of Modern Art exhibit. So is anybody really surprised that the fans weren't clamouring to see a Marc Webb-directed superhero movie about a depressed guy grieving over the death of his girlfriend? And who might the villain(s) have been? Sony were building towards a Sinister Six movie before this, but then afterwards Drew Goddard said things like:
"My vision of [Sinister Six] was a summer annual... I intentionally wanted a movie that didn’t have to worry about mythology and continuity. It was important to me to make a movie that could stand on its own.... I felt strongly that I wanted this movie to just stand on its own. I feel like, in general, I get tired of these movies where they’re becoming too much of a puzzle for people to solve. I’m like, 'no, just have fun.'" -Drew Goddard, 2015
So if Sinister Six wasn't supposed to have had any connection to The Amazing Spider-Man movies at all whatsover, couldn't they have just made TASM3 as a character-driven Marc Webb-romantic comedy about Mary-Jane Watson and not worried about which villain Peter has to fight in the 3rd act? Sure, if you're a capable enough screenwriter to work around those parameters without it reading like Twilight fan fiction, by all means be our guest. But as it stands Sony wasn't ready to take that chance, the Marvel Cinematic Universe already had a special spot reserved for the webbed world of Spider-Man, a place where Sony can better maintain the purity of Peter Parker's character and not pile on so much melodrama that it becomes unwatchable at a certain point.
VENOM CARNAGE - This one would've been Alex Kurtzman's sophomore directorial effort after his amazing helmsmanship on the high octane, pulse-pounding Chris Pine-vehicle, People Like Us, which featured not one, not two, but a whopping ZERO car explosions as well as a subplot about 'magic blood' that is neither seen nor alluded to at any point in the film. Alex must've pitched Sony one heckuva Venom movie for them to just throw a screenwriter the keys to the kingdom like that, but then again, his partner in Bayhem Roberto Orci got booted out of the Star Trek: Beyond writing sessions for reasons unknown, so maybe the same thing is happening to Alex right now as this Venom project develops. Even so, we all knew back when that Marvel/Sony deal first passed that Sinister 6 and Venom were still under heavy consideration, and while the former sounds not only more expensive but more #problematic if it means having to share a Rogue's Gallery with the MCU like a co-ed bathroom, the latter solo flick might actually be franchise material on a micro-budget. Instead of six characters they can just focus on one, make him an ammoral, sarcastic anti-hero, and dig up some of the most obscure Spider-Man characters they can find to round out his supporting cast and—Oh wait... this movie is a direct response to DEADPOOL, isn't it? Damnit, I knew this sounded familiar!
THE UNTITLED ANIMATED SPIDER-MAN FILM - Phil Lord & Chris Miller are cinematic darlings in the eyes of Movie Twitter and critics alike, so it's a shame that they aren't returning to helm 23 JUMP STREET, which I'm guessing will be named more creatively with possible titles like 'Men in Black IV: Jump Street' or 'Area 51 Jump Street' or 'White Men In Black Can't Jump Street' or something like that. But as of right now these guys have their plates full with a whole smörgåsbord of movie offers including screenwriting The Flash for WB, directing the Han Solo solo film for LucasArts, and producing an animated Spidey flick for Sony. While it's not that unusual for these guys to work on both live-action and animated films simultaneously and still knock both outta the park (like 22 Jump Street & LEGO MOVIE in 2014), when Lord &Miller's Spider-Manimation project got pushed back from Summer 2018 to Winter, some of us started to question whether or not this movie would even happen, which is a common reaction to things that are distant and shrouded in mystery. The one thing I can speculate about it is... what if they're recycling leftover ideas from Drew Goddard's Sinister Six? You know, stuff that would not have translated as well to live-action, namely huge, complicated fight sequences with The Vulture, Sandman, and Mysterio, or the pain of having to find somebody who can barely hold a candle to Alfred Molina's Doc Ock performance no matter how good of an actor he is.
So originally we were gonna get 3 Sony spin-offs that had nothing to do with one another, but NOW we're getting 1 Marvel Studios movie, and then 2 Sony spin-offs that have nothing to do with each other. A year ago, who would've thought we'd be getting THREE concurrent Spider-Man franchises, each having it's own unique tone? Well David Koepp sure did, a screenwriter on both Sam Raimi's and James Cameron's Spider-Mans, had this to say in 2015:
"When I was doing Spider-Man the first time, I remember distinctly having thoughts about three movies, each of a different kind. The way the comic-book lines switched, it was Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man… there were a number of them. ...So rather than try to pursue the same course, or any kind of similar tone, you’d have strikingly different tones. The classic Spider-Man, that would be the top-of-the-line, studio Sam Raimi ones, then the Amazing Spider-Man ones, they’d be done for $75-80 million, and have a rougher, edgier, almost R-rated feel to them – if not R-rated, though I don’t think they could ever bring themselves to do that. Tougher, nastier, a rougher look... shorter movies. And these series didn’t have to be consecutive, they could be released concurrently."
So it seems like a 'classic premium Spider-Man' would refer to Tom Holland's movie, while the "rougher, edgier, R-rated" film could translate better into the Venom saga, but what about the Lord/Miller-produced computer animated version? Well he predicted that one, too. "Then I also thought there should be a ‘Spectacular Spider-Man’ series, because Spider-Man leaves out a large group of its audience. Little kids are fascinated by Spider-Man by the time they are three, or younger. But when I was a kid, I loved the animated series, so I always thought there should be separate lines to cater for different ages of Spider-Man fans." How prophetic! But wait... you guys aren't really just gonna steal that idea without crediting him at all? C'mon SONY! I know you guys have fallen on hard times but... if you're gonna steal any idea, steal my Venom pitch. I'm practically giving it away right here for free.
— YOU ALL STRAPPED IN? GOOD. BECAUSE HERE ARE 4 STEPS TO TAKE TO MAKE THE VENOM MOVIE AWESOME! —
STEP #1: Combine Eddie Brock with AGENT VENOM - Since we can safely assume Flash Thompson has to be showing up somewhere in Marvel's Spider-Man as part of their John Hughes-esque high school ensemble, the idea of Chris Zylka's Flash from the Amazing series starring in his own movie as an Iraq War vet who gets Lieutenant Dan'd and bonds with a symbiote to regrow his legs, let's just say it wouldn't be putting your best foot forward, (pun very much intended). Besides, everyone knows that Edward Brock Jr. is the quintessential Venom, and although combining his 1980s origin with Agent Venom is easier said than done, I'll do my best to explain how those storylines can coexist. In my movie, Eddie Brock is a journalist at The Daily Bugle who used to write very anti-Spider-Man editorials before old webhead decided to disappear for three years... but at the start of the film, Spidey's back! People don't see him swinging around as often as they used to, but police records show he's been cracking down on organized crime on the outskirts of NYC. Brock, however, sees the vigilante's true colors, because right now there's a serial murderer on the loose, and our friendly neighborhood hero just can't find the time to put a stop to the carnage. So Eddie takes matters into his own hands, he conducts his own investigation and thinks he's pinpointed the identity of the serial killer — but he's wrong! He accuses the wrong man, and the Bugle fires him right there on the spot.
STEP #2: Make It A REVENGE STORY - Revenge stories are one of the staples of cinema, but outside of things like Kill Bill, The Crow, John Wick and now DEADPOOL, there haven't been a whole lotta revenge stories in recent memory, so if you're gonna make an R-Rated Venom why not use it to take the Spider-Man universe into it's darkest chapter yet? When Eddie returns to the Bugle to gather his belongings, the entire building gets ransacked by CARNAGE and his symbiote-infected followers, THE SAVAGE SIX, but Eddie is powerless to stop his former co-workers from getting murdered all around him, not only secondary characters like their publisher Dexter Bennett, but people Eddie may have had feelings for, like secretary Betty Brant, are also murdered in the ensuing attack; and it's all his fault, because Cletus Kasady wanted to send a message to the publication who credited another man for his dirty work. Our hero is completely devastated, we see him at the same low point that we'd see any anti-hero, the same moment before Frank Castle became The Punisher, or before Jesse Custer became The Preacher. This is when Eddie decides to take matters into his own hands, if Spider-Man won't bring the Carnage Killer to justice, then an ordinary citizen must rise to the occasion; so he buys some hi-tech firearms and black body-armor on the black market, and paints a white spider-symbol across his vest, calling himself: VENOM! All the sting of spider-bite packed into a more concentrated, more LETHAL dose. Kinda corny, but good so far, yeh?
STEP #3: Introduce Audiences To 'THE SHOCKER' - Remember that scene in the church from Spider-Man 3? No, not the part where Topher Grace paraphrases Prayer To God by Shellac, but the part where Emo Parker's trying to get rid of the black suit? Well according to that scene, only LOOOOOOUD NOISES can detach a symbiote from its host — and what else is noise but an intense vibration travelling through the air? So it's at this point in the story that Eddie teams up with Herman Schultz, AKA THE SHOCKER, an inventor and engineer who's a little bit smarter than your common criminal, with whom he shares a hatred towards Spider-Man, of course Eddie's never tried and failed to rob a bank before so they have different reasons for loathing the vigilante. Using his VIBRO-SHOCK GAUNTLETS, Schultz and Brock begin to hunt down members of the urban terrorist group calling themselves 'The Savage Six' — who each possess their own Symbiote color scheme and codename: Agony, Phage, Riot, Scorn, Dreadface, Lasher (on Donner! on Blitzen!) — in order to track down and put an end to Cletus Kasady once and for all. But when Eddie Brock gets infected, Schultz has no choice but to turn against his ally, and the Symbiote that's latched onto Eddie is also the strongest one of them all, so when it overtakes his armor it transforms him into the fully-fledged VENOM, a Xenomorphic-textured, hulking, drooling brute with the white Venom emblem remaining on his chest. Brock flees into Central Park and it's here that he engages in a dialogue with the suit, we start to figure out where these Symbiotes came from (from space, but also from OsCorp) and after attaining symbiosis with the alien suit, he teaches it how to retract several tentacle-like appendages and fire every one of his firearms at once.
STEP #4: SNEAK 'MILES MORALES' INTO THE VENOM MOVIE! - And by sneak him into the Venom movie I of course mean you should give away this crucial plot detail in the 2nd trailer, because let's face it—you're Sony! Embrace the meme, dude. That moment when Miles takes off his mask certainly has the potential to catch people off-guard, it'd be a totally unexpected twist because the costume he'd be wearing would look nearly identical to the Silver Age classic red-and-blue underoos, and Eddie wouldn't be shocked to find out that Spider-Man is black, but he'd be completely baffled as to how the wall-crawler would have so much of a career behind him, when he's just a 13-yo kid! Later we find out that the 1st Spider-Man has long since retired, meaning all of his more recent gangland activity has actually been the work of a Black Hispanic teenager from Brooklyn who was bitten by a similar OsCorp spider. The mutual respect that develops between Miles and Eddie ends up becoming the emotional core of the movie, rather than the vile hatred going on between Venom and Carnage, and teaming up with Spider-Man to take down Kasady would effectively bring Brock's character arc around full circle! Best of all, the fallout from this crossover event wouldn't necessarily result in a Venom 2— what'd be even better is if Morales went on to star in his own spin-off movie, which would of course be called: ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN!
- BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK? CAN THREE SPIDER-MAN UNIVERSES SIMULTANEOUSLY CO-EXIST? -
- SOUND OFF BELOW! AND IF YOU WANNA READ MORE -----> MY FANTASTIC FOUR SCREENPLAY -
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