Sony took a big risk by rebooting their Spider-Man franchise so soon after Sam Raimi's tanked, but it's clearly paying off in a major way. The Amazing Spider-Man(review here) opened on Tuesday with a record breaking $35M, and by the end the weekend it might be up as high as $150M. Not bad for a film with a relatively unknown director, and an unproven Andrew Garfield under the mask. The studio's confidence isn't recent, though. More than a year ago they had set a sequel for May 2nd 2014, and just a couple of months ago hired writers to bang out the script. Now we're getting our first official word that more than a sequel is in the works, but that we're looking at a trilogy, at the very least, with the possibility for
many more films on the way.
Thanks to ThePlaylist for noticing this post from the film's Facebook page on Monday....
"It's finally here! The Amazing Spider-Man is the first installment in a movie trilogy that will explore how our fave hero's journey was shaped by the disappearance of his parents."
I think we've all sort of expected a trilogy to be the likely route, but this is the first official statement on the matter. Producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach seem to be planning for a trilogy and beyond, and while talking with Superhero Hype, hinted that the Sinister Six may turn up as the major villains in a future film....
SHH: Do you feel like you need to stay away from some of the villains that have appeared in the Sam Raimi movies? Or can you redefine them within the context of this new Spider-Man?
Arad: Well, not really. There are so many ways to paint these villains, all of them. As you know, one of the great sagas in the Spider-Man universe is of course the Sinister Six. I think "Avengers" did okay the last time I looked.
Tolmach: It's going to be okay.
Arad: Yeah, it will survive.
SHH: So are you suggesting you're going to do five Spider-Man movies introducing each villain and then the sixth movie will have the Sinister Six?
Tolmach: It seems like a good model.
Arad: It all depends on the stories that one wants to tell, because Spider-Man is really more a depth kind of a story, we have to be careful how many villains we can service, because a relationship with a villain has to be such that it's a story on his own. We attempted to do multiple villains--you've been there--you just need screen time to do it.
Now, six movies is a heck of a commitment, so the chances of that happening are slim. Besides, they don't have to solely use The Amazing Spider-Man movies to introduce these villains. We know that a Venom spinoff movie is in the works, and that it may tie-in with what we've already seen. I believe that the Venom we'll see won't be the symbiotic villain, but the Flash Thompson paramilitary anti-hero version. If that's the case, Chris Zylka could come back as Thompson, and we may see a number of these villains introduced in Venom movies, leading to Spidey and Venom teaming up when the Sinister Six comes together.
So, who are the Sinister Six, anyway? They're basically all of Spider-Man's rogue's gallery all teamed up to put the wallcrawler into the morgue. The group was formed by Doctor Octopus after he had suffered one too many defeats in a row. The team also consists of Electro, Vulture, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, and Sandman, although The Lizard, Doctor Doom, and Green Goblin were also approached. The genius of the Sinister Six's strategy is that they didn't just attack Spidey all at once. Instead, they each took him on individually at specific locations that played up to their strengths, wearing him down before they all finally finished him off. They came pretty darn close on a number of occasions, and the team has taken many different forms. The Lizard does eventually join when the group doubles to become the Sinister Twelve.
We've talked about it here and on the show that every studio which owns a piece of the Marvel Universe was going to start following The Avengers model on a smaller scale. That's what Sony appears to be doing now with Spider-Man, and we can expect to be seeing a lot more of him for many years to come.
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