Sony went full steam ahead with its plans for a Sinister Six film back in 2014. As a result, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 became a clunky and overstuffed affair, as it practically turned into a 142-minute commercial for the all-villain team-up. Then the Sony leaks happened and everything was rebooted.
After Tom Holland's warm reception as Spidey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Captain America: Civil War and the co-produced Spider-Man: Homecoming, Sony kickstarted its plans for a new Spider-Verse, internally titled Sony's Universe of Marvel Characters (SUMC). Keeping in mind that the studio has the rights to approximately 900 Marvel characters, it could be massive, and we've already seen the likes of Venom, Morbius, Kraven the Hunter, Silver Sable and Black Cat movies get greenlit for production.
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Speaking to Variety, Sanford Panitch, president of Columbia Pictures, said: "We're focused on being faithful to the comics. Spider-Man connects to a lot of the characters. There are villains, heroes and antiheroes, and a lot are female characters, many of whom are bona fide, fully dimensionalized and utterly unique."
The lack of a Sinister Six announcement is peculiar, though, especially since Sony was so hot on the idea before. The Amazing Spider-Man's director, Marc Webb, even revealed to Den of Geek that a Sinister Six film was meant to be the main priority after The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
"They were going to make a Sinister Six movie before we did the third one," said Webb. "Chris Cooper was going to come back and play the Goblin. [He] was going to be the main villain. He was going to come out and lead the Sinister Six. We had talked about Vulture a little bit too, actually."
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Drew Goddard spoke proudly about working on the script to IGN. "I love that script; it was really fun," said Goddard. "I love the artist I was working with. The trick with Sinister is that I was making everyone the protagonist and less about six-on-one and more about coming at it a little differently. That was the idea."
Why has Sony cooled on the idea, then? Depending on the iteration of the team chosen, it could feature the likes of Doctor Octopus, Electro, Vulture, Sandman, Green Goblin and Scorpion in a Suicide Squad-styled movie. That's certainly bigger than any proposed Nightwatch or Jackpot movies. So, why the reluctance to get this into production?
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It could be because of Venom.
What the studio is essentially doing is building a universe of Spider-Man characters without the Web-Head. It's risky -- and some might even think downright stupid. It could go either way, though. If Sony creates new and interesting angles for these characters, fans could warm up to the idea in the long run. The proof is in the pudding, however, and Venom will be the first serving of the SUMC.
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There's a lot riding on Ruben Fleischer's film. The trailers haven't fully convinced the general audience about this new symbiote-driven production, but the mood is certainly more positive than when it was first announced. If it succeeds at the box office, that means it's all systems go for the next SUMC productions in the pipeline. If not, it could derail the train around the first bend.
Maybe Sony did learn its lessons from The Amazing Spider-Man franchise. Rather than run with scissors, the studio is taking a calculated wait-and-see approach with its properties and moving one step at a time. After all, the days of shared cinematic universes being money for jam are over. Audiences are becoming more discerning and pickier about which superhero films they see in theaters due to the sheer number of them. So, it's become a case of quality over quantity.
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On the other hand, it's possible that we're completely wrong here and Sony is keeping the Sinister Six for Spider-Man. Perhaps Marvel had a chat with its fellow studio and strongly suggested that a Sinister Six film without Spidey is a bad idea. Instead, we could be building up to what would be the Web-Crawler's own crucible, in which he'll need to face all six of his toughest rogues at once. Sony has said it's open to further characters appearing in Marvel films, so this could be a hint as to why the Sinister Six hasn't featured in any announcements. Moreover, one of the leaked mails from the Sony hack suggested that Holland's Spidey will do battle with the Sinister Six in the future.
That said, this is Sony -- the company that called in Brian Michael Bendis to explain to the execs whether or not Spider-Man utilized mechanical or organic webshooters when the answer is in the comic books. There is the impression that the studio throws things against the wall to see what sticks and it could do the same with the Sinister Six down the line. Let's hope there is an actual plan here and this isn't another misguided effort from the powers that be.