Drew Goddard

According to some reports (but not others), Sony has found the filmmaker to restart the Spider-Man franchise one more time, with The Sinister Six writer/director Drew Goddard swinging off of that project and onto a new Spider-Man franchise. But that still leaves the issue of who will play the new Peter Parker. Latino Review’s report on the Goddard rumor claimed they wanted a “new actor, probably an unknown” who’d start off in high school and grow with the part “a la Harry Potter.”

Last year, back when it still seemed possible that Sony may try to continue their Amazing Spider-Man reboot and before they teamed with Marvel to relaunch Spidey in a new film series that will connect with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ScreenCrush Editor-in-Chief Mike Sampson and I put together a list of ten directors we thought could save the Spider-Man franchise. One name we both immediately thought belonged on the list was Drew Goddard, the man who directed The Cabin in the Woods and was then slated to direct the Amazing 2 spinoff The Sinister Six.

After the news that Marvel and Sony had come to an agreement to co-produce a new series of ‘Spider-Man’ movies, while also introducing the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of the items we immediately turned our attention to was Sony's planned ‘Sinister Six’ spinoff, which was deep into development and was teased all through last summer’s ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2.’ Director Drew Goddard (‘The Cabin in the Woods’) had been working on the film since last year (he even left Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’ series to focus on it) with a November 2016 release date planned. The future of that film seemed very tenuous this morning following the big announcement, but now comes news that the film is still in development at Sony.

In yet another shocking Marvel plot twist, their upcoming 'Daredevil' series has reportedly lost Drew Goddard. While it's not nearly as hard of a blow or as surprising as yesterday's news that director Edgar Wright has parted ways with the studio over differences on 'Ant-Man,' it's still enough to make this a bit of a one-two punch.