After Venom, Sony readies movies about Black Cat, Silver Sable, anyone who’s met Spider-Man

“The world has enough superheroes.” That’s the tagline for Sony’s new Spider-Man spin-off, Venom. Billed as a mix between a horror film and, um, a superhero movie, Venom stars Tom Hardy in the title role. But what’s next for Sony after Venom goes worldwide in October? According to Variety, quite a lot.

Disney has acquired Fox, meaning that characters from the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises can now, in theory, play in the same cinematic sandbox as those from The Avengers and Black Panther. Sony, which has the film licensing rights to around 900 Marvel characters, many of them related to Spider-Man, now stands alone. (Although Sony has been playing nice with Marvel of late, allowing Spider-Man to appear in Avengers: Infinity War and joining forces to produce Spider-Man: Homecoming.) Now, it looks like Sony wants to compete the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Warner Bros.’ DC movies by making its own interconnected series of films starring characters from the Spider-Man canon.

So far, Sony has plans for films featuring the likes of Spider-villain Morbius (with Jared Leto playing the living vampire), Kraven the Hunter, Silk, Jackpot, and Nightwatch. Sony previously had plans for a film called Silver & Black, focusing on a team-up between Silver Sable — a mercenary who hunts war criminals — and Black Cat, a burglar who certainly isn’t a ripoff of Catwoman. Now, both characters will get their own movies! “We’re focused on being faithful to the comics,” said Sony exec Sanford Panitch. “We believe Black Cat is enough of her own character with a great backstory and a canon of material to draw from to justify her own film.”

That lineup is significant because a lot of the films revolve around female heroes, or antiheroes, or villains, or what have you. Even in this age of superhero dominance at the box office, there hasn’t been a lot of that; DC’s Wonder Woman was a hit in part because it was unique, and Marvel is finally coming round the bend with a movie about Captain Marvel. And Jackpot is a 40-something woman, which is even rarer. “We feel there’s no reason the Marvel characters shouldn’t be able to embrace diversity,” said Panitch.

And we can assume that Spider-Man will be heavily in the mix, since he “connects to a lot of the characters.” I hope you’re in the mood for more superhero movies.

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