Last month, Sony announced plans to spin off the Amazing Spider-Man franchise with new films focused on some of the superhero's most popular foes: the Sinister Six and Venom, from the creative minds of Drew Goddard, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and others.

In a new interview with IGN, Orci opened up about the spinoffs, and whether he thinks films about comic book "antiheroes" can work. "There are some antiheroes in this day and age," he said. "There's been examples of that even on TV — Vic Mackey on The Shield, one of the greatest antiheroes of all time. There are ways to milk that story. Audiences have seen everything. They've seen all the good guys who never do anything wrong. Is there a story in seeing the other side? That's the challenge, and that's the fun. I'm not sure how we're going to do that yet."

Orci stopped short of revealing story-specific details, but mentioned that Oscorp "plays an important part in how our villains get created," including, potentially, Venom.

"Because Peter becoming Spider-Man came out of [Oscorp], rather than saying, 'And then this alien came from space,' or whatever, they're doing human-hybrid, weird stuff at Oscorp," he explained. "That's where Gwen Stacy works anyway as well. So the idea of it representing the good and the bad of science, that it can do great things, but it can also mess you up and do weird things and transform people -- as all science can be used good or bad. So it's nice to have that organizing principal, but it wasn't like, 'We must keep it at Oscorp.' It flowed naturally from the story development."

However the films shake out, Orci doesn't believe that the Spider-spinoffs are being eyed as replacements for The Amazing Spider-Man 4, already scheduled for a May 4, 2018 release.

"I think with Spider-Man 4, the intention is for it to be Spider-Man," he said.