After Marvel’s Kevin Feige recently expressed his wish that someone who had access to a major comic-book movie franchise would finally make one starring a female superhero, it seems Sony has come along to make his dream a reality. Deadline reports that the studio is using the problems with its Spider-Man franchise as a crisitunity, readying an as-yet-unspecified female superhero movie for release in 2017. Along with the Sinister Six movie planned for 2016, this mystery movie will help to fill in while The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is shipped off to 2018—like a superpowered Rosie The Riveter, stepping in to ensure Sony’s comic-book movie industry runs smoothly while its spider-men are away. I think you will find that analogy is totally unassailable.
While Deadline says this movie will be developed by Burn Notice’s Lisa Joy (who’s currently writing HBO’s Westworld with her husband, Jonathan Nolan) and produced by the Spider-Man franchise’s Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, not much else is known. Most important, obviously, would be which female superhero from the Spider-Man universe, with the possibilities ranging from Black Cat—who was played by Felicity Jones (in her Felicia Hardy alter ego, anyway) in The Amazing Spider-Man 2—to those not yet seen, like Silver Sable, Firestar, and Stunner. There’s also the just-introduced Silk, who was ret-conned into Peter Parker’s origin story in the comics suspiciously recently. And of course, there’s Spider-Woman, whom Stan Lee whipped up just to make sure no one else would beat him to it, which would certainly fit the creative impetus behind this project.
Whoever the character ends up being, the film should at last satisfy those who have long been calling for a new superhero movie featuring a female lead—or it will once it prompts the actual Marvel to make one itself.