Sony has always clutched Spider-Man close in their stake on the future of big-budget superhero films, but their latest ante shows they’re eager to also expand the franchise to just about every villain around. In addition to three forthcoming “Amazing Spider-Man” sequels, last month the studio announced “Venom” and “The Sinister Six” films fronted by a “brain trust” of folks like Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Drew Goddard (“Cabin In The Woods“). A recent chat with Orci revealed a glimpse of exactly how they’re going to pull off that massive feat.
Speaking with IGN, Orci mainly addressed the challenges of tackling such a villain-oriented film as “The Sinister Six” with Goddard, Kurtzman, and other collaborators (including “Fringe” writer Jeff Pinkner and Ed Solomon [“Men in Black”]). He also notes the idea of a large writers’ room is as comfortable as any, especially with he and Kurtzman back in a similar sort of groove to their time working on “Xena: Warrior Princess” and “Alias”.
“Even though I might not be the one writing ‘Venom’, I’ll be in the meetings talking about how to make it interesting,” he said. “We could be putting in easter eggs and planning ahead in the previous movies, and then that guy over there is going to write that movie, and Ed Solomon’s gonna write another one with us…that’s kind of going back to the way we started.”
When it came to “Sinister Six,” the example of Vic Mackey from “The Shield” was useful as they pondered how to handle such a crowded narrative of bad guys. “Audiences have seen everything,” he explained. “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.”
However, one issue decided upon is the new villains’ origin stories, most of whom Orci tied to a central location in this year’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” and upcoming sequels: Oscorp, and its human-hybrid activity. “[T]he idea of it representing the good and the bad of science, that it can do great things, but it can also mess you up…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.”
We suppose that also means Norman and Harry Osborn will factor quite a bit throughout, but speaking of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” we’ve got seven new images (via Total Film), featuring Electro (Jamie Foxx), Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) and of course, Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield). The Marc Webb-directed film opens on May 2nd. Check out the pics below along with an extensive breakdown of the trailer featuring commentary by Webb, Garfield, Stone and Foxx.
