After The Amazing Spider-Man 2 failed to impress (a middling 53% on Rotten Tomatoes and the lowest gross of any Spidey film so far), Sony has decided to reboot the franchise and re-introduce the character in an animated feature.
The studio, having also agreed to lease the character to Disney-owned Marvel Studios, has hired Chris Miller and Phil Lord to bring the project to the screen. Lord and Miller have had massive success in recent years with 21 Jump Street, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and The Lego Movie.
The pair will write the treatment and produce the film, but not direct. They are currently working on sequels and spinoffs to both 22 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, as well as DC superhero film The Flash.
The announcement was made at CinemaCon film convention taking place this week in Las Vegas, by Sony Pictures chairman Tom Roth. He claimed it would “co-exist” with the live-action Spider-Man films, but a press release stated that it would “exist independently”.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Sony had signed a new deal that would allow Spider-Man to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man’s first appearance in a Marvel film will be in Captain America: Civil War, which will launch on 6 May 2016, before he gets his own film the following summer.
The animated iteration will be released in 2018.
