Spider-Man's Cancelled Movie Based On Popular Comic Series Was "Swinging For The Fences" As Marvel Film Nearly Started Filming

Published Apr 5, 2026, 1:46 PM EDT

Andy Behbakht has worked as an entertainment journalist since 2010, covering all the latest in Hollywood on both the big and small screens, from staying on top of the biggest breaking news, analyzing movies and television shows in Hollywood, to in-depth interviews with actors and storytellers.

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He confirmed that the script was completed at the time, saying, "Oh yeah, we were in prep. We were in deep prep, I had a whole art department" while adding that Martin Whist was "my production designer who did Cabin with me, who did [The] Cabin [in the Woods] with me, who did Bad Times [at the El Royale,] did Cloverfield. We had a whole operation there at the Sony lot, and it was definitely a very Drew approach to a Spider-Man movie."

He continued, "I would say in the sense of like I was swinging for the fences, like we were going for it," in terms of the bars they were trying to hit for the Marvel property. After having said it was kind of a heist movie, Goddard clarified that "What I thought of it as was a summer annual, and if you're a comic book reader, especially at the time I was making it, I felt that comic books became very much about this serialized story. The movies became so much about like, 'Well this movie is just about somebody gets a jewel to get to the next thing to get to the thing,' and it worked really well."

However, Goddard "felt like what I loved about summer annuals in the comic book world is you had the serialized story, and then every summer there would be a giant-size issue that had nothing to do with the serialized story where the main character usually got yanked out of the normal life and thrown into an insane situation. And that's what I wanted to do with Spider-Man." In the end, the filmmaker "just felt like that will be fun and let's go for it. Let's sort of throw all the things that I love about Spider-Man in there. And they let do it."

But unfortunately, the Sinister Six movie was scrapped following the massive Sony hack in 2014. Garfield's franchise also didn't move forward after the results of The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Would A Sinister Movie Have Worked?

Goddard shared in the same interview that, "as one can imagine, of course, one of the fun parts of any Sinister Six story is picking who the six are. And, oh my god, that alone, when you ask like, am I sad? I'm obviously sad I didn't get to make the movie, but I did get to make the movie for myself. I'm just sad no one else got to see it," which adds to the questions of whether a Sinister Six film would have worked in the comic book film space at the time. Given how films based on villains weren't really a regular thing in Hollywood at the time, it would have been a risk, but definitely something that could have stood out, depending on how he would have tackled it.

So far, the closest to a Sinister Six adaptation that Sony has gotten is through Spider-Man: No Way Home, where Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Sandman from Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man films, along with Electro and Lizard from Andrew Garfield's movies, came together in a massive crossover, as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline. While it was more the Sinister Five than the Sinister Six, they came much further than Sony's Spider-Man Universe did, after the attempt that started in Morbius.