We all know that Sony was cooking something very horrendous beyond The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The seeds for it were planted in TASM 2, and TASM 3 would’ve been another set up for more spin-offs. It would’ve brought back Peter’s dad Richard Parker, and we would’ve seen Mary Jane Watson (Shailene Woodley). We’ve got some major information about all of Sony’s initial plans that have been canceled. The latest set comes from Ryan Unicomb’s Instagram.
He wrote:
“Marc Webb’s THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 3 (2016) –
It’s no secret that Sony had massive plans to rapidly expand their Spider-Man franchise out of 2014’s TASM2. With Director Marc Webb & Star Andrew Garfield both contracted for at least three films, Sony was hard at work laying track for the expansion to take place. During Production of the second entry, development officially began on TASM3 (2016) & TASM4 (2018) with Alex Kurtzman, Bob Orci & Jeff Pinkner writing the screenplays, Sinister Six (2016) to be written and Directed by Drew Goddard & a Venom stand-alone film (2017) written and Directed by Alex Kurtzman.
The focus of TASM3 would be the immediate aftermath of two different things – The death of Gwen Stacey and the reintroduction of Peter’s (not actually dead) Father, Dr. Richard Parker. The film would also see the introduction of Shailene Woodley’s Mary-Jane Watson (scenes were shot and unused for TASM2), Peter would meet her while attending grief counseling. No draft has ever been made available to read publicly but it sounds as though there were even more nefarious connections between Richard Parker’s past and Oscorp, as well as a connection to the shadowy figure “The Gentleman” who had appeared in the previous two films in order to bring the Sinister Six together.
Marc Webb has openly suggested he planned to introduce Venom and the black suit into this film first before the characters standalone adventure, as he felt it suitable to have that kind of story attached to Peter’s overwhelming guilt. There were also payoffs for the “fake out” death of Normal Osborn (deleted scene shows his head in stasis, very much alive) – it is thought that he had tricked his son Harry into become the Goblin in order to steal his body, although that has not been confirmed.
Interestingly, Felicity Jones had also signed on to return for TASM3, this time playing a more complete version of BLACK CAT than we saw in TASM2 (she’s there. Watch again). While The Amazing Spider-Man 2 earned $709 million worldwide it was a franchise-low total for Sony. They opted into a contract with Marvel/Disney, rebooting the franchise and well.. the rest is history.
These plans totally match with the brief revelations that director Mark Webb made about his plans for The Amazing Spider-Man 3. He wanted Chris Cooper to return as the villainous Green Goblin. Here’s what he revealed when he spoke to Den of Geek (via The Playlist):
“Yeah, we were talking about the Sinister Six. They were going to make a Sinister Six movie before we did the third one. But I wanted…Chris Cooper was going to come back and play the Goblin. We were going to freeze his head, and then he was going to be brought back to life. And then there was that character called The Gentleman. We had some notions about how to do it, but I think maybe we were thinking too far ahead when we started building in those things. But it was a fun exercise. I look back very fondly on those days.”
So it looks like the big twist of TASM 3 would’ve been resurrecting the dead and it would’ve all tied to Norman Osborn faking his death. Further revelations came from actor Denis Leary who played Captain George Stacy in TASM 1 & 2. Captain Stacy died in the first movie and his ghost was seen haunting Peter in the second movie. But in the third movie, Leary revealed that Captain Stacy would be back from the dead. Speaking to IGN at Comic-Con 2015, Leary said:
“Part of the discussion was that possible in ‘3’ there was this idea that at one point Spider-Man would be able to take this formula and regenerate the people in his life that had died. So there was this discussion that Captain Stacy would have come back even bigger in episode three.”
So, The Amazing Spider-Man 3 would have been all sorts of mess. If Peter would’ve resurrected the dead then he would’ve certainly brought Gwen Stacy & Uncle Ben back. And where that would’ve left Mary Jane now remains to be a mystery. Also, Sony would’ve been making the same mistake that they did in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. That film failed because Sony wanted to add 3 villains instead of keeping the focus on just one or two. And here, Sony was not only going to tie in the Sinister Six, but there was supposed to be a story arc for Felicity Jones’ Black Cat involved the Black suit Spider-Man, Venom, Green Goblin & the mystery villain known as the Gentleman.
This film would’ve come after the Sinister Six movie and led into spin-offs like Venom, and maybe Silver and Black. As far as the Sinister Six were concerned, their members would’ve included – Doc Ock (possibly played by Colin Farrell), Vulture, Green Goblin, Kraven, Mysterio and Rhino as these six were teased during TASM 2 and its end credits. The Gentleman would return to assemble them and he’d probably be the one to help Norman Osborn from being back from the dead.
After The Sinister Six movie, Peter would’ve asked for the help of the Sinister Six to take down the villains in TASM 3. But they would’ve made fun of his black suit, so he’d get rid of it and that’s when the symbiote would attach to Cletus Kasady and we’d have Carnage in the Venom movie. We can all agree that these ideas were all stupid deserve to be cursed at! We’re glad that none of this happened & we got the best version of Spider-Man in the MCU.
