No matter what happens with the Spider-Man rights, Sony is determined to keep mapping out a future with the characters currently in their arsenal. Following the massive success of Venom last year, the studio will reportedly continue on the path of villain origin stories with a feature centering around Hobgoblin. At least, that’s according to our sources, who say executives at the company are already in the early stages of developing a film based around the infamous bad guy.
As fans will know, the villain isn’t just one person, as plenty of wrongdoers have donned the name and costume over the years to fight Spider-Man. Roderick Kingsley, a billionaire and fashion designer, was the first foe to use the alias back in 1980, but since then, Arnold Donovan, Ned Leeds, Jason Macendale, Daniel Kingsley, Phil Urich and more have all had their time trying to take down the web-slinging superhero.
This upcoming project could potentially focus on several of these characters or instead choose to spotlight just one. While Roderick Kingsley may have been the first to bring the alias to life, Macendale spent over a decade turning Hobgoblin into one of the best comic book villains of all-time. Then again, the filmmakers in charge could decide to go in a different direction entirely. At this stage, it’s simply too early to say.
Now that Spider-Man is expected to make his debut in Venom’s cinematic universe some time in the near future though, he’ll likely have to battle Hobgoblin as well at some point. Woody Harrelson’s Carnage will also be on the way before long, meaning that Peter Parker is going to face a lot of stiff competition on the mean streets of New York City. The Avengers won’t be around to help him out anymore, either, so the web-head is going to really have his hands full with all of these enemies.
And while plans can always change, this intel comes to us from the same sources who told us Tom Welling was returning for “Crisis,” Jonah Hill was starring in The Batman and Ewan McGregor was returning as Obi-Wan. As such, we have no reason to doubt it and as soon as we learn more about what the studio’s got in store for the Hobgoblin, we’ll be sure to let you know.
