According to Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach, producers on Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man franchise, we won’t be seeing anyone don the red and blue spandex other than Peter Parker, despite there being several comic book characters who have taken on the moniker of Spider-Man over the years (as well as Andrew Garfield’s desire to “pass the torch” to someone like Miles Morales). This proclamation has been met with much chagrin from fans, especially considering Sony’s plans at creating a “shared” cinematic universe around the wall crawler. He’s the only superhero the studio owns the rights to, which is why we’re seeing villain-centric spin-offs like Sinister Six and Venom coming down the pipeline.
If the producers ever decide to come to their senses though, they’ll now know who to call, as former Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan wants to put on a pair of web shooters! She plays the blue-skinned villainess Nebula in Marvel’s upcoming cosmic blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy, but in a recent interview with SFX she revealed that she’d love to portray a superhero someday, and is actually a huge fan of Spider-Man:
Joseph McCabe: If you could play a superhero, which one would you choose?
Gillan: Yeah, who is there…? I want to play a version of Spider-Man that’s a lady.
McCabe: Spider-Woman?
Gillan: Spider-Woman – does she exist?
McCabe: There’s a Spider-Woman and a Spider-Girl.
Gillan: I want to play Spider-Girl!
Okay, so she’s not exactly a huge Spider-Girl fan, or even aware of her existence, but it’s still cool that Gillan is a Spidey fan and sees the potential in a female web-slinger. Unfortunately, it probably won’t happen, at least for a long time, after Sony’s rebooted the franchise several times (going through the adjectives in their catalog, like The Spectacular, The Ultimate, and The Superior Spider-Man). In fact, we’re probably more likely to see someone like Miles Morales don the costume before we see someone like May “Mayday” Parker or Julia Carpenter (Spider-Girl and the second Spider-Woman, respectively).
Personally, I’d love to see something like this happen somewhere down the road. After all, what does Sony have to lose? What better way to make a Spidey-verse than to populate it with a few other Spider-Men and Spider-Women, right?
