Outside of "The Amazing Spider-Man," Sony doesn’t have much in the way of live action franchises, and that could be a problem. “It’s creative entropy, and I think there’s been too much of a reliance on ‘Spider-Man.’ They need some other things to build out,” media analyst Harold Vogel has opined. But Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal believes in Spidey, so much so that she’s planning to spin a bigger web around the superhero.
“We are expanding the ‘Spider-Man’ universe into ‘The Sinister Six’ and ‘Venom,’ so that we have ‘Spider-Man’ movies every year,” Pascal said. Damn. Perhaps it’s not a surprise with four "The Amazing Spider-Man" films already planned through 2018, and Alex Kurtzman and Drew Goddard already at work on "Venom" and ‘Sinister Six’ movies. As we’ve already talked about, this constant need for studios to ‘Avengers’-ize their properties is becoming pretty dismal, but that’s what stockholders want to see, and as long as audiences keep showing up, this will continue.
And for right now, Sony is banking the future success of "The Amazing Spider-Man" on Marc Webb with Variety confirming he will be back to helm the third installment, which is due to hit theaters on June 6, 2016.
So, Harold Vogel, what else can you look forward to from Sony? Well, the studio is entirely counting on Spidey to keep them afloat with "Goosebumps" cooking, and an entirely animated "The Smurfs 3" on the fast track. The studio also has the feature rights to video game "Gran Turismo." But right now, the color of their money is Spider-Man red with much, much more to come.
