Posted in: Movies | Tagged: captain america, doctor strange, entertainment, film, iron man, kevin feige, marvel, punisher, sony, spider-man

Marvel And Sony Have A Deal, So What Could Be Next For Spider-Man?

With the big Marvel / Sony announcement last night about basically sharing Spider-Man, this opens up so many possibilities. So many stories that fans thought were off limits because of character rights that now can be tapped. So let's just take a few minutes and think about those.

Civil War is the obvious one and the most likely place we'll see the Wall-Crawler. Peter Parker was torn between the two sides, originally siding with Iron Man and revealing his identity before switching to Captain America's side. Prior to this deal, many people were wondering how they could twist the Civil War story to fit since no one in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe has a secret identity… but now we are getting Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist thanks to Netflix… but none of those bring with them the draw nor the existing fan knowledge that Spider-Man does.

But here are some things we might get to see now that Marvel and Sony are playing nicely together.

Spider-Man versus the Hulk. We get to see Hulk vs Hulkbuster in the Avengers: Age of Ultron, but I've always loved watching Spidey take on the Hulk… it's like the Web-Head doesn't realize just how much danger he is in and he's moving around so fast and shooting webbing in Hulk's eyes… I would love to see that in live-action.

Spider-Man and Daredevil. This is a team up of two of Marvel's best known street-level heroes and there is almost a big brother/little brother relationship between the two. In the last five Spider-Man movies, he's never had anyone he could go to who could relate to what he's dealing with… with Daredevil, he has that. Plus it would be fun to watch them kick some butt together.

Spider-Man and Iron Man. I think Tony Stark looks at Peter Parker as the young innocent kid that he missed out on being. Peter has the intellect to stay in Stark's ballpark and the courage to swing into battle at his side… but Peter isn't jaded to the world the way the money and power has jaded Tony. It's a side of Iron Man we don't get to see right now.

Spider-Man and the Punisher. Both characters need to be revitalized and how awesome would a Spider-Man vs Punisher movie be? I mean, that is how we met Frank Castle in the first place. And how much fun would it be to see Spidey making all his jokes at the super-serious vigilante's expense?

Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. Could there be two more opposite heroes? One deals with science and sarcasm while the other is all magic and mythos. The two iconic characters created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko could be the best "buddy-cop" movie of all time.

But besides Spider-Man, that also opens the door to Spider-Woman joining the Avengers. And Venom is currently a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy… both are now possible through this deal. Bringing Venom into The Guardians and Spider-Woman into the Avengers would create the potential stand-alone franchises that Sony so desperately wants.

Or you take a character like Black Cat… you introduce her in the background of Civil War as a minor character or you give her an episode of Agents of SHIELD where she gets recruited because of her thieving skills or she's the villain of the episode on Daredevil… maybe Matt Murdock is defending her… and then you have her move into a Spider-Man film as a flirtatious criminal that Peter is quite sure what to do about and the you spin her off into her own film.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe worked because they had three heroes that could (and did) carry their own films. They built an interactive universe around them with other characters and it just kept growing. Outside of Spider-Man, there really isn't a character in Sony's collection that doesn't need to be introduced in a Spider-Man film. But now with access to the Marvel Universe, there are so many starting places they build from.

And you know this all has to lead up to Spider-Man alongside the Avengers taking on Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet.

The other nice thing, with Kevin Feige now being involved in the creative direction, maybe he can reign in what has killed the Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man franchises… Spider-Man 1, great movie one villain. Spider-Man 2, great movie one villain. Spider-Man 3, horrible movie 3 villains. Amazing Spider-Man 1, great movie 1 villain. Amazing Spider-Man 2, decent movie 3 villains… you'd think someone over there would have noticed the pattern, but since they were headed toward the Sinister Six, I think not.

A lot remains to be seen. How the relationship between the two studios will work out could be a match made in heaven or horrific. Just what Sony decides to do with the franchise with Feige and Amy Pascal's influence now should be interesting to see. Will we get a new, younger Peter Parker or will we stay with Andrew Garfield. Or if they change actors, will they keep any of the existing story or set him back to high school? How many times will audiences be willing to go see his origin story? Whatever they are going to do, they will need to move fast as the only place to put Spider-Man into a Marvel Universe movie before the July 2017 Spider-Man release date is Captain America: Civil War and I'd think that would have to be getting geared up to go very soon.

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