Earlier this year, Sony and Marvel struck a deal that would finally bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One- mostly positive- side effect of this monumental agreement was that all of Sony’s other Spider-Man plans had to be scrapped. That didn’t exactly bother fans since it meant we wouldn’t have to worry about another Amazing Spider-Man movie again, or that weird Aunt May spinoff, or any of the other “exciting” ideas Sony was cooking up. However, there was one project that had garnered some interest, and that was Drew Goddard’s Sinister Six movie.

The idea of a super-villain team-up featuring some of Spidey’s greatest foes could’ve been really cool but c’est la vie, right? If its death means that Spider-Man can be born into a shared universe with Captain America, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and company then it’s well worth it. So that was that, and it’s now time to move on. Or so we thought.

According to Goddard, who’s had strong ties to Marvel Studios even as he worked diligently with Sony on their old plans, we could still see his Sinister Six one day. After all, Marvel loves Goddard. He’s a “Joss Whedon Guy” who created the hit Netflix series Daredevil, and who they’ve brought on for Season 2 even though he stepped away from Season 1 to work on Sinister Six. 

In a talk with io9, Goddard explained how his Sinister Six film can still happen one day:

“My vision of that movie was a summer annual. So you didn’t have to worry about continuity. It was just, ‘We take Peter, put him on an adventure, we put him back in his life.’ I intentionally wanted a movie that didn’t have to worry about mythology and continuity. It was important to me to make a movie that could stand on its own. So the good news is, you know, [laughs], it slots in very well to any plan anybody ever wants. We just need to let a couple years go by, I think.”

Is he bummed that the movie, at least for now, has fallen off the slate?

“The tricky part about all this is I love this plan. I love that you get to see Spider-Man in Marvel movies. I think that’s a great thing. I’m on board with that decision because as a fan that’s what I want. So who knows what the future holds? This is Hollywood, man, you’ve gotta play the long game.”

Lastly, Goddard reveals that the film he wrote is less the “super-villain movie” that everyone theorized it was and more of an epic Spidey adventure:

“It was a Spider-Man movie. It was the giant, epic Spider-Man movie of my dreams.”

Interesting. This approach would stand in stark contrast to Marvel’s current cinematic strategy. In the MCU, even the filmsthat seem the most “standalone,” like Ant-Man and Guardians of The Galaxy, have enough of a connection to the rest of the Universe that it’s easy to see how they fit into the larger story being told. The one film that seemed to be set mostly outside of the main story, Iron Man 3, has been criticized for being too “on an island.” So it would likely take some convincing for Marvel to green light a film that’s totally unrelated to “mythology and continuity.”

Of course, with the conflicting reports about who really controls the direction of the Spider-Man movie franchise- Sony or Marvel- who knows? Maybe Sony will get the itch one day and pull the trigger on The Sinister Six anyway. Regardless, we now know that Goddard’s film wasn’t written to be directly tied to the Amazing series, so it can definitely be tweaked to work with whatever form the series takes in the years to come.

Does that get your Spidey senses tingling? Or are you happy to just flush all of Sony’s old plans out? Discuss.

SOURCE: io9