Amazing Spider-Man Star Dane DeHaan on the Failed Sinister Six Movie Plans

In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t even that long ago but it seems like a decade since news of Sony’s plans for a Sinister Six spin-off of their Amazing Spider-Man movie series was regularly making the rounds. The Cabin in the Woods director Drew Goddard, whose track record with cancelled superhero projects is almost unparalleled, was set to write and direct the movie, but as we now know the plans for the film fell apart. Speaking in a new interview, one of the potential stars of the movie opened up about what he knew of the movie and confirmed that the Marvel Studios deal killed the project.

“Not necessarily,” DeHaan told Collider when asked if he knew specifics of the film’s plans. “I think it’s pretty obvious they were all setting up for like a Sinister Six kind of situation and there was certainly talk of doing all that before all the Disney, Marvel stuff happened. But I can’t tell you I know specifically what it was gonna be. I just know that there definitely would have been a Sinister Six element to it. And, you know, at least the Goblin, if not Harry Osborne would have been involved.”

The Sinister Six film was heavily set-up by The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and even had a release date of November 11, 2016. As we now know, that didn’t happen, and the lackluster reception of that 2014 sequel starring Andrew Garfield killed the franchise and saw Sony team up with Marvel Studios to bring the wall-crawler to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which buried the project completely. Some details of the project have come out over time, specifically from the Sony hack of 2015, but it’s Goddard’s own comments about the film that make this unrealized movie seem like a lost gem.

“My vision of that movie was a summer annual,” Goddard told io9 in 2015. “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.”

Fans have remained hopeful for an MCU movie that focuses on the villains since a number of high-profile Spider-Man antagonists have already been introduced in the character’s two solo movies. In Homecoming, fans were introduced to Vulture (Michael Keaton), Shocker (Bokeem Woodbine), Tinkerer (Michael Chernus), and Scorpion (Michael Mando). Then, of course, Gyllenhall’s Mysterio would make it five total villains.

That’s not including the likes of Venom or Morbius who, despite having their own solo movies, are in a strange position of not being Marvel Studios movies but having a connection to Tom Holland’s version of the character. That connection became even more tangible when it was revealed Michael Keaton would return as the Vulture for the Morbius movie, which itself might set up The Sinister Six moreso than Homecoming did in its post-credit scene.