Sony Pictures announced today (July 23) that it would be pushing back the release of “Amazing Spider-Man 3” by two years, to 2018. In the interim, the previously in limbo villain-centric “Sinister Six” will now hit theaters on November 11, 2016.
This is hot on the heels of Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzmann, both of whom had been driving forces behind the rebooted series, expressing doubt as to the franchise’s future.
And while having these two release dates is a step in the right direction, it’s clear that “Spider-Man” still has a fair amount of righting of the ship to do before it can push past the underwhelming (for the blockbuster “Spider-Man” series, mind you) grosses of “Amazing Spider-Man 2.”
There’s an easy solution to the problem, though, and it’s one that’s been ignored for as long as Sony has been making “Spider-Man” movies: they need to stop focusing on the “Man” part, and start gearing the series towards spiders.
Think about it: right now, every “Spider-Man” movie has featured human leads, whether its been anchored by Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, or Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. And every movie has been marketed directly at humans, through posters, billboards trailers and more.
Which is fine and good, but clearly “Spider-Man” has reached its peak of interest with human beings. There’s a little over seven billion people on Planet Earth, and at this point in time, Sony has reached every person they can possibly reach.
But spiders? Spiders out number human beings a thousand to one, and that’s only the species we know about. That means there’s over seven trillion spiders walking the face of the planet, and not once has anyone ever asked them if they want to see a “Spider-Man” movie.
Even if Sony only reached out to a portion of that population, it still dwarfs the number of humans who will and could see movies. You’re guaranteed a box office smash.
Obviously, there’s a couple of problems that Sony would need to address if they geared “Amazing Spider-Man 3″ to spiders instead of men.
First and foremost, the theaters are way too large for spiders. You would need to install smaller seats, and probably smaller screens, which will take miniature artists a fair amount of time to build.
In addition, spiders usually have anywhere from six to eight eyes. You’ll have to develop new cameras to shoot for spider eyes, and forget about racking up extra grosses with 3D: not only do spiders have far poorer eyesight than humans, they also don’t have ears, making wearing glasses extremely difficult.
There’s also the problem of what spiders like to see on screen. If you’re going to get a “Spider-Man’ movie into theaters that accurately portrays life from a spider’s perspective, you’ll need spider screenwriters, or at the very least spider marketing executives. Sony would be well served to begin reaching out to the spider community immediately, if they want to have a vice president in charge of spider marketing in place by the time cameras get rolling.
And then of course, there’s money. It’ll be a problem to get spiders to pay to go see a movie, because they don’t have pockets. We’ll put a pin in that one.
So there you go! Our two cents, but if Sony really does want “Amazing Spider-Man 3″ to succeed, this is likely the best way to go. By making it for spiders.
Alex Zalben
Writer/Editor at MTV News. You can follow him on Twitter, but not in real life because that would be weird.
No Comments