What We Know About Sony's 'Spider-Man' Universe So Far

Sony owns the rights to around 900 Marvel Comics characters and has spent around 900 years trying to figure out how to make money out of the ones not called "Spider-Man." In 2020, they announced that the official name of their universe is SPUMC (Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters) -- and the SPUMC is finally rising, baby! (They later changed it to "Sony's Spider-Man Universe," but we know their heart's not in that name.) 

After the success of the two Venom movies, Sony felt emboldened to go forward with a bunch more Spider-Man movies without Spider-Man in them. For instance, it was just announced that Russell Crowe will appear in a movie about Kraven the Hunter, which sounds like GREAT casting, since Crowe has a similar build and manic energy as the villain who once defeated Spider-Man and celebrated by eating fistfuls of spiders. 

Thing is, Crowe isn't playing Kraven. Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Kick-Ass is. But, given that in the comics, Kraven has a whole bunch of psycho kids who follow his steps, it's possible Taylor-Johnson is actually playing one of the Kraven Jrs. and Crowe the real deal. 

Another confirmed SPUMC project is a live-action show based on Cindy "Silk" Moon, a classmate of Peter Parker who was bitten by the same radioactive spider and gained different spider-related powers. Instead of trying to make money wrestling "Macho Man" Randy Savage, Cindy ends up getting locked up inside a room for 7 years to protect her from a family of interdimensional vampires who go around the multiverse killing Spider-People. Cindy has actually appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe already as a classmate of Peter and a fellow decathlon nerd ... 

... but the show will star a different version of the character. We'll also get a third Silk in the all-female Into the Spider-Verse spin-off, Spider-Women, which will hopefully do well enough to warrant more spin-offs, like maybe an all-pig or an all-Nicolas Cage one. 

And speaking of Spider-Ladies, we recently told you that Dakota Johnson will star in a film about Madame Web, the geriatric clairvoyant and the only Marvel character with the distinction of having been voiced by someone who's had sex with Stan Lee (his wife). We're reasonably sure that Johnson is playing the second, younger version of the character, unless they're planning to keep her buried under two tons of old person make-up for the entire movie like Guy Pearce in Prometheus. 

Of course, you already know there's gonna be more Venom movies and, at some point this century, Sony will finally release Jared Leto's Morbius, about the vampire with the occasional butthole hands. Sony is also still hoping to do that Sinister Six film they promised when the Earth was young and Andrew Garfield was Spider-Man. 

Sony's Spider-Man Universe is shaping up to be fairly villain-centric, since the most interesting characters from that lot they bought in a fire sale when Marvel was going bankrupt in the '90s happen to be Spider-Man baddies. Despite happening entirely out of necessity, this does give this universe a distinctive feel compared to the MCU, where superheroes are so ubiquitous that they get their own giant statues and terrible musicals. If Venom's anti-heroics set the tone for this universe like Iron Man set it for the MCU, we could see something pretty interesting -- not necessarily good, but interesting. Anyway, hope you are spumped for more SPUMC! 

Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok's heroic effort to read and comment on every '90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com.  

Top image: Marvel Studios, John Mathew Smith/Wikimedia Commons