Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Whether it be a whodunit novel, a thrilling crime caper flick, an engrossing podcast, or even the popular board game Clue, people love trying to figure out the unknown answers of the universe. Well, Sherlock Holmes hopefuls, get ready to have your curiosity piqued because Sony Pictures just announced a date for an as-of-yet unrevealed Marvel/Sony film for 2021! That’s not too far off, True Believers! But what could the comicbook commotion be? Put on your thinking caps, you salivating sleuths, because there’s a mystery afoot!
Okay, let’s get down to business first by lining up all the facts. What we know right now are two very important details: 1. The release date: October 8, 2021, and 2. That it’s a Sony screen-owned Marvel character. From that information alone we can deduce that it’s NOT going to be Venom 2, Into the Spider-Verse 2, or the untitled Spider-Man 3. That only leaves the possibility of a Marvel Spider-Man supporting character or villain flick that Sony is looking to spinoff into their own film series, similar to Venom and the upcoming movie Morbius.
The current Spider-Man, as played by Tom Holland, is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper due to a deal for Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures to share the web head’s screen rights. But all of Spider-Man’s supporting characters and rogues’ gallery of bad guys are still firmly owned by Sony. The studio has been busy as of late, developing their own Marvel movie universe adjacent to Disney’s, with crossover cooperation pending.
In addition to the aforementioned Venom and Morbius movies, Sony has been hard at work developing films for a number of other Marvel Spider-Man characters. If we comb through the Sony Spider-Man movie news from the past few years we can come up with a few feasible suspects.
The first candidate on our list would be none other than Kraven the Hunter! Back in August 2018, it was reported that screenwriter Richard Wenk was hired to write a Kraven the Hunter flick for Sony.
First appearing in Amazing Spider-Man #15 in 1964, Kraven was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko as a Russian big game hunter hellbent on adding Spider-Man to his wall of trophies and proving he is the greatest hunter that ever lived. But would Spider-Man be the initial target in a hypothetical Kraven movie? Maybe he would be hunting Venom or Morbius first? Interesting…
Moving down our checklist of possibilities, we next come to the announced-but-then-canceled Silver and Black movie. In March 2017, news came out that Sony had hired MCU veteran scribe Christopher Yost to pen a Black Cat and Silver Sable team-up movie. Gina Prince-Bythewood was hired to direct the film, but it was delayed and then removed from the schedule altogether with Sony saying the two characters would first be developed into their own stand-alone movies before being brought together. No further news has surfaced on the characters’ possible film endeavors since.
Finally, we have the Korean American character known as Silk, who first appeared in 2014’s Amazing Spider-Man #4 by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos. Cindy Moon aka Silk is a classmate of Peter Parker’s who was bitten by the famous radioactive spider right after it chomped on poor Peter during their fateful high school field trip. In June 2018 it was reported that Sony was developing a feature film around Silk, but nothing concrete has come out about the character since. Cindy Moon has actually appeared twice in the MCU before as one of Peter Parker’s classmates. Actress Tiffany Espensen is credited as the character in both Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War. Does this mean Silk could be the frontrunner for the new Sony Spidey movie since she’s an already established film face?
Alright diligent detectives, those are the three threads we’ve uncovered in the great movie mystery of 2020! But the question remains… do any of them lead to Sony’s enigmatic movie date of October 8, 2021? The answer could be staring us right in the face! The only way to find out is more digging… or wait until Sony makes the official announcement in the not so distant future. Elementary, my dear True Believers. Elementary.