Not too long ago, Drew Goddard was in the enviable position of being at the helm of a number of highly exciting projects. Unfortunately, fate or coincidence or what-have-you resulted in those projects not coming to fruition with Goddard at the helm. The Cabin in the Woods helmer was first set to write and direct The Martian, but after completing the script he got the call to go and run Marvel’s Daredevil TV series, an opportunity the lifelong Daredevil fan couldn’t pass up. But then, after he completed the scripts for the first two episodes of the Netflix series, Goddard was called upon for another project he couldn’t turn down: directing Sony’s big supervillain movie The Sinister Six.

Daredevil moved forward with Steven S. DeKnight taking over as showrunner, but after a year’s work on Sinister Six, the film was shelved when Sony Pictures opted to reboot its Spider-Man franchise yet again—this time with Marvel Studios as a partner. Goddard is currently still filling his executive producer role on Daredevil Season 2 and his script remains an integral part of the success of The Martian, so when he was recently doing the press rounds for the latter, he spoke with io9 a bit about what he had planned for Sinister Six:


“My vision of that movie was a summer annual. So you didn’t have to worry about continuity. It was just, ‘We take Peter, put him on an adventure, we put him back in his life.’ I intentionally wanted a movie that didn’t have to worry about mythology and continuity. It was important to me to make a movie that could stand on its own. So the good news is, you know, [laughs], it slots in very well to any plan anybody ever wants. We just need to let a couple years go by, I think.”

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Image via Marvel Comics

The initial plan was for Sinister Six to go into production directly after The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but the first signs of strain appeared when Sony wavered on whether to move forward with Sinister Six first. Ultimately neither film came to fruition, but since Goddard’s idea for the supervillain picture was for it to be a standalone story, it could still be retooled to fit into whatever Marvel Studios and Sony have in mind for this new Spider-Man franchise:

“The tricky part about all this is I love this plan. I love that you get to see Spider-Man in Marvel movies. I think that’s a great thing. I’m on board with that decision because as a fan that’s what I want. So who knows what the future holds? This is Hollywood, man, you’ve gotta play the long game.”

Finally, while the title suggests a movie that focuses on the baddies of the Spider-Man universe, Goddard told io9 it was still very much a Spider-Man movie, describing it as “the giant, epic Spider-Man movie of my dreams.”


While Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a massive disappointment, I remained intrigued by the idea of Goddard delving into the superhero universe with Sinister Six—and his idea for the movie sounds fantastic. Here’s hoping his relationship with Marvel leads to the film seeing the light of day sometime soon.

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Image via Lionsgate