Draft:The Sinister Six (film)

The Sinister Six is an upcoming American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics team of the same name, produced by Columbia Pictures in association with Marvel. Distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is intended to be a film in Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU). The film will be written and directed by Drew Goddard.

Plans for a Sinister Six film were first announced by Sony in December 2013, with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) as an establishing point and Goddard attached as writer and director. The film, alongside several The Amazing Spider-Man 2 spinoffs, was canceled by November 2015 so Sony would focus on its new reboot with Marvel Studios. In December 2018, the film was revived as part of Sony's shared universe, with Goddard expected to return from the first iteration.

Initial plans and cancellation
In December 2013, Sony Pictures revealed plans to use The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) to establish their own expanded universe, inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and based on the Marvel Comics properties that Sony had the film rights to. This included the Sinister Six, a group of Spider-Man villains. Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach would produce the films as part of a franchise brain trust that also included Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Jeff Pinkner, Ed Solomon, and Drew Goddard, as well as The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 director Marc Webb. Goddard would write, with the intention of directing, The Sinister Six. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 introduces or teases several members of the Sinister Six, including the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Rhino, Vulture, Kraven the Hunter, and Mysterio. These were all being considered for the film.

Goddard was confirmed to be directing The Sinister Six in April 2014. Arad and Tolmach said the film would be released after The Amazing Spider-Man 3—which was scheduled for release on May 27, 2016, at the time—but before The Amazing Spider-Man 4. Following the premiere of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Tolmach would not confirm or deny whether Spider-Man would be appearing in The Sinister Six, but said that the newly planned spin-off films would not be entirely focused on villainous characters and that "there's complexity to all of [the Sinister Six] ... there are some guys who are redeemable, and some who are really horrible." Arad added that the film would be about "redemption", and would not necessarily be a faithful adaptation of the comics which he felt would need some "adaptations" for a modern audience. By the end of April, the final line-up of characters for the Sinister Six team were still yet to be decided as Goddard continued work on the script, but production was on schedule to begin filming as early as January 2015.

After The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperformed and with Sony "under tremendous pressure to perform [that has them taking] a hard look at their most important franchise", the direction of the new shared universe was rethought. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 was taken off its release date, and The Sinister Six was scheduled for release on November 11, 2016. In February 2015, Sony and Marvel Studios announced a new partnership that would see the latter produce the next Spider-Man film for Sony, and integrate the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sony still planned to produce the spin-off films without Marvel's involvement. That September, Goddard reiterated that the film could still happen. He described it as a standalone story that could fit into the Spider-Man franchise regardless of the mythology or studio plans, and compared this approach to a "summer annual" where "We take [Peter Parker / Spider-Man], put him on an adventure, we put him back in his life." Goddard added that the film was intended to be a Spider-Man film rather than focus solely on the titular villains. By November, the spin-off films were believed to have been canceled, with Sony instead focusing on its new reboot with Marvel Studios.

In May 2017, Sony officially announced plans for a new shared universe, Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU), featuring Spider-Man-related properties beginning with Venom in October 2018. The Sinister Six was still considered to be canceled, with Sony looking to build the new universe gradually rather than rushing a large team-up film as they had previously planned to do with the Amazing Spider-Man spin-offs. Goddard reflected on the project in October 2018, calling it a more commercial version of his film The Cabin in the Woods (2012) with the same "punk rock mentality". He felt it could be "different and exciting and just flat-out bananas".

Revival
In December 2018, when the successful release of Venom meant previously canceled plans for Spider-Man spin-off films "could actually come to fruition", producer Amy Pascal described the Sinister Six project as "very much alive in [her] mind". Pascal said she was ready to continue work on the film once Goddard was available to direct it. In September 2019, The Sinister Six was listed as one of Sony's in-development projects for their shared universe. In an interview released the next month, Pascal hinted that the villains of Marvel Studios' Spider-Man films—Michael Keaton's Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)—could become members of the Sinister Six in a future film as they are in the comics. Sony Pictures Group President Sanford Panitch was asked in May 2021 if the then-recent casting of Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Kraven the Hunter for multiple SSU films meant a Sinister Six film was in development. Panitch would not reveal specific information about such a project as he preferred to develop the SSU films in secret, but expressed excitement over the idea. The Sinister Six was confirmed to be a long-term goal for Sony's universe that September. The mid-credits scenes of the SSU film Morbius (2022) feature Keaton's Vulture being transported from the MCU to the SSU by Doctor Strange's spell from the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). In the scenes, Vulture deduces that his transportation involved Spider-Man and approaches Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) about forming a team, which Morbius director Daniel Espinosa said was intended to be the Sinister Six. He said Sony had a plan to explore the idea further, and expressed interest in having Norman Osborn join the team.