Sony Had An Eight Movie Spider-Man Plan After ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2,’ And Almost None Of It Survived

Long before Sony built its Venom franchise or handed Spider-Man over to Marvel Studios, the studio had a far bigger and bolder plan already in motion, one that centered entirely on Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker. In the years following ‘The Amazing Spider-Man,’ Sony assembled what it called a creative “brain trust” to build connective tissue across a slate of Spidey adjacent films, all feeding into and out of Garfield’s ongoing story.

At the center of that plan were roughly eight separate projects in various stages of development, spanning direct sequels, villain team ups, and character driven spinoffs. It is a lineup that, in hindsight, shows just how differently the Spider-Man franchise might look today had any of it actually reached theaters.

Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man Universe Was Meant To Expand Fast

Sony Pictures began developing this expanded universe featuring supporting characters from the Spider-Man films by December 2013, planning to use ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ to launch several spinoffs built around the character’s villains. The brain trust behind the plan included producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, along with Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Jeff Pinkner, Ed Solomon, Drew Goddard, and director Marc Webb.

‘The Amazing Spider-Man 3’ was meant to directly continue Garfield’s arc, with plans reportedly built around introducing Mary Jane and dealing with the fallout from Oscorp’s growing web of secrets, while a fourth installment was intended as the culmination point where several spinoff threads would finally converge into one crossover event. Neither film made it past the planning stage.

Sony’s timeline shifted repeatedly as the studio prioritized its expanding slate of spinoffs, eventually pushing the third film back years before the entire sequence collapsed. By 2014, Sony’s Columbia Pictures had even announced an updated schedule that pushed ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 3’ from 2016 to 2018 to make room for a spinoff instead.

The Sinister Six And Venom Spinoff Plans Sony Wanted First

The Sinister Six had been the film Sony wanted to make since ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2,’ with Drew Goddard attached to write and direct a story meant to bring together several of Garfield’s Spider-Man’s greatest foes. Sony’s Doug Belgrad, president of the studio’s motion picture group at the time, said the company felt confident enough in Goddard’s take to place the film on a prime 2016 release date.

An internal pitch from Sony marketing executive Juan Capdet proposed an even larger slate of spinoffs, ranging from Venom to Kraven the Hunter to Black Cat, envisioning the Sinister Six film releasing first, followed by a dedicated Venom movie targeted for 2017, with ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 3’ only arriving after those two. Capdet’s proposal imagined the films eventually building toward an Avengers style crossover centered on the villain Carnage.

Producer Matt Tolmach had also floated tying Spider-Man’s black costume storyline directly into the Sinister Six film, with Spider-Man and the Six teaming up against Carnage before the black suit fell into the wrong hands. Sony was clearly treating the villain team up as connective tissue for nearly everything else on its slate.

A separate, darker spinoff focused on Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote was also in development, referred to internally at one point as Venom Carnage, with Alex Kurtzman attached to direct. None of these projects ultimately reached production under the Garfield banner.

Silver Sable, Black Cat And Other Unmade Corners Of The Slate

Sony was also developing a female led team up project pulling from characters including Silver Sable, Black Cat, Spider-Woman, and Silk, alongside a separate solo film centered on Felicia Hardy, or Black Cat, that reportedly had Lisa Joy attached to write. Internal discussions reportedly linked the Silver Sable project directly to the Sinister Six storyline, with Silver Sable assembling her own team to help save Spider-Man alongside her father.

Rounding out the slate was a planned Spider-Man 2099 film built around Miguel O’Hara, and a widely reported spinoff centered on a younger version of Aunt May, envisioned as a 1960s set espionage story. Other characters discussed in Sony’s internal planning documents around this period included El Muerto, Jackpot, Kraven, Madame Web, Morbius, and Nightwatch.

Taken together, the eight projects represented a version of the Spider-Man franchise built almost entirely around characters other than Peter Parker himself, years before that same strategy would eventually define Sony’s actual shared universe starting with ‘Venom’ in 2018. The company was effectively rehearsing an idea it would not execute successfully until much later, and with different actors attached.

The Sony Hack And Box Office Numbers That Ended The Plan

‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ arriving to weak reviews and softer than expected box office numbers in 2014 became the turning point for the entire plan. After the film’s relative critical and financial disappointment, Sony’s plans for the expanded universe were abandoned, and in February 2015 the studio announced a deal to collaborate with Marvel Studios on future Spider-Man films.

The massive Sony hack that same year leaked internal documents detailing many of these unmade projects to the public, effectively killing what had become known as the Amazing Spider-Man universe and pushing the studio toward its eventual deal with Marvel. By November 2015, Sony had shelved the remaining spinoffs tied to Garfield’s version of the character, ending the Amazing Spider-Man universe before most of it ever got in front of cameras.

Three of the ancillary projects, the Sinister Six, Venom, and a combined Black Cat and Silver Sable film, initially carried over into the Tom Holland era of the franchise, though only ‘Venom’ would eventually reach theaters, in 2018. The combined Silver Sable and Black Cat project was later shelved in favor of two separate films focused on each character.

Despite ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ teasing a five villain team up years later, a true live action Sinister Six film has still never actually happened. Given how much of Sony’s original eight film plan quietly resurfaced in different forms across the years that followed, which of these unmade Garfield era projects do you think deserved to make it to the screen.