We’re just a few months away from the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but Sony has already set out its stall for the future of the franchise, with 2016’s The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 2018’s The Amazing Spider-Man 4 set to be joined by spin-offs for Venom and The Sinister Six. Speaking to IGN, Roberto Orci – co-writer of TASM2, TASM3 and Venom – has offered some details on the two spin-offs, revealing that they’re still considering how to tackle the films, seeing as they’re going to have bad guys as the protagonists.
“That’s the discussion we’re having right now; how exactly do you do that, and how do you do it without betraying the audience and making them all mean? Drew Goddard [The Cabin in the Woods] is going to be writing [The Sinister Six], so it’s kind of his problem. [Laughs.] I’m kidding. We’re all working on each other’s stuff. So we want to be true to it, but there are some anti-heroes in this day and age. There’s been examples of that even on TV – Vic Mackey on The Shield, one of the great anti-heroes of all time. There are ways to milk that story. Audiences have seen everything. 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.”
Orci then went on to reveal that Oscorp will play an important role in the creation of the villains for The Amazing Spider-Man 2, hinting that Venom’s origin could be getting a revamp in the rebooted movie series: “Oscorp plays an important part in how our villains get created, obviously, in the first one. So because Peter becoming Spider-Man came out of that, rather than saying, ‘And then this alien came from space,’ or whatever, they’re doing human-hybrid, weird stuff at Oscorp. That’s where Gwen Stacy works […] as well. So the idea of it representing the good and the bad of science, that it can do great things, but it can also mess you up and do weird things and transform people – as all science can be used for good or bad. So 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.”
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will swing into cinemas on April 18th 2014 in the UK and May 2nd 2014 in North America with a cast that includes Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Sally Field, Paul Giamatti, Chris Cooper, Felicity Jones, Colm Feore, B.J. Novak, Chris Zylka, Embeth Davidtz, and Campbell Scott.
Originally published January 16, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
