While Sony at this point still retain full rights to the Spider-Man film franchise, De Luca is more than happy for them to take the reins. Why? Because if Marvel’s prior success is anything to go by, the inclusion of Spidey in their cinematic universe may spark interest in fans for the webhead’s future solo outings. This would remove the need for a Sinister Six film – intended to reinvigorate the exhausted Spider-Man brand – and place artistic control firmly in the very capable hands of Marvel.
That’s a lot of possibility up in the air. However, no one has shaken hands with regard to the Marvel-Sony deal yet, which was further jeopardized by the idea of yet ANOTHER Spider-Man reboot if he stays at Sony. De Luca again was the key figure in this part of the leak, and stated that any new Spidey pics would not be re-treading the origin story. He then offered up his choices for villains which include, the aforementioned Carnage, Venom (in Ultimate Venom form), and Hobgoblin, with his preferred storyline emanating from the Spider-Man comic series written by Michael Bendis, Michael Strascynski and Brain K. Vaughn.
To top things off, it turns out that Captain America: The Winter Soldier helmers Anthony and Joe Russo were also involved in discussion with Sony head Amy Pascal in late November. After offering their commiserations over the failed Marvel deal (“A pity that negotiations with Marvel did not work”) they then proposed to take over production duties on all of Sony’s future Spider-Man movies through their new label, Bullitt.
Joe Russo makes mention that a “difficult conversation” would have to take place with current Spider-Man producers Matt Tolmach and Avi Arad, but that it would be worth having. This indicates that while the proposed third reboot (as mentioned in the above paragraph), of the webslinger’s big screen antics may or may not be controlled by Marvel, two of Marvel’s directors might be producing. However, at this stage, Pascal’s response has yet to be unearthed.
With the Sony leaks fiasco still revealing a slew of intriguing insights, it’s unknown which elements of the discussions are likely to transpire. It seems that the Marvel-Sony deal, now made public, has provoked a positive reaction from fans but has still not been confirmed.
As always we’ll keep you posted on any new developments concerning Spider-Man, Sinister Six, Captain America: Civil War and all the goings-on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.