Sony has tried multiple times to get a “Spider-Man” film franchise off the ground. And now, three separate times, it’s worked. However, they all tend to end badly. Tobey Maguire’s “Spider-Man” run ended after a bad third film and was the subject of some behind-the-scenes studio meddling. Then Andrew Garfield’s “Amazing Spider-Man” had a rough start and seemed to suffer from Sony wanting to do way too much way too soon. Fingers crossed that Tom Holland’s run doesn’t fall apart in a similar fashion. But we’ll have to wait and see for that. However, when speaking about how his version fell apart, Andrew Garfield shed some light on what Sony did have planned if things continued for more films.
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Speaking to Collider, Andrew Garfield reminisced about his time as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the two ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ films. Overall, the actor is happy with his time on that franchise, as he’s spoken about before. He said he’s “really glad” he did the films and has no regrets. But when asked about the proposed spinoff film, written and directed by Drew Goddard, that would have seen Peter Parker go up against the Sinister Six, Garfield did talk about how close the film almost got to being made.
“I don’t know how close it got, but I definitely had a few meetings, and it was really exciting,” said Garfield about ‘Sinister Six.’ “I’ve got to say, because I love Drew so much, and I love ‘Cabin in the Woods,’ and the other stuff that he’s made. We just got on like a house on fire. I loved his vision, he’s so unique and odd and off-kilter and unconventional in his creative choices. So that was definitely a fun couple of months, but life.”
For those non-comic book readers, “Sinister Six” is a film that was going to show how six of Spider-Man’s worst enemies band together to finally defeat the hero. You can see how Sony was setting this up, in a truly ham-fisted way, in “Amazing Spider-Man 2” by introducing a new Green Goblin, Rhino, and Electro, while also teasing Vulture and more. This insistence on laying the groundwork for future films definitely contributed to the messiness of the film. And ultimately, the film didn’t perform nearly as well as Sony wanted and led to Marvel Studios coming in and offering to reboot the character with “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Thus, ‘Sinister Six’ and Garfield’s run were killed.
Fortunately, even though Goddard’s “Sinister Six” film seemed, at the time, like the closest we’ll get to a big villain team-up film for the “Spider-Man” franchise, it does look like the upcoming ‘No Way’ home could be just as big, with the involvement of Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus, as well as the rumored appearances from Jamie Foxx’s Electro and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. We’ll just have to wait and see.