Roberto Orci Talks Challenges Of Making 'Sinister Six' And 'Venom' Movies
Without an idea of what happens in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, it's difficult to predict how this new, linked Spider-Man universe is going to unfold. We know Marc Webb's next movie is out May 2 and Sony has another sequel planned in 2016, followed by Sinister Six and Venom. However, the idea of building to films starring a bunch of famous villains such as Lizard, Electro, Rhino, Green Goblin, Vulture and Doc Ock seems almost insurmountable. In a new interview, a member of Sony's new Spider-Man braintrust joked about that very thing.
Roberto Orci, who is co-writing The Amazing Spider-Man 3 as well as Venom, talked about the challenges a Sinister Six movie poses and likened the process of creating a Spider-Man universe with villains at the epicenter to making a season of television.
Orci's quote comes from an interview with IGN. He covers a lot, so here are some highlights:
On the challenge of creating a Sinister Six movie:
That's the discussion we're having right now; how exactly do you do that, and how do you do it without betraying the audience and making them all mean? Drew Goddard is going to be writing that one, so it's kind of his problem. [Laughs] I'm kidding. We're all working on each other's stuff. So we want to be true to it, but there are some antiheroes in this day and age. There's been examples of that even on TV — Vic Mackey on The Shield, one of the great antiheroes of all time. There are ways to milk that story. Audiences have seen everything. They've seen all the good guys who never do anything wrong. Is there a story in seeing the other side? That's the challenge, and that's the fun. I'm not sure how we're going to do that yet.
On whether he thinks the new Spider-Man world feels overly ambitious:
No it doesn't, actually. It feels very familiar, because Alex and I started in television. In television, you get a great team of writers together, a writing staff, and you're working on five episodes at once. You're prepping one, you're shooting one, you're writing one, you're posting one, and you're trying to make sure they're consistent over 13 or 22 episodes. That's how we learned how to do things. So it's funny in the movie business, and you have different things being done by different teams and they're not all communicating with each other. So when we talked about our interest in all this stuff, we said, "Well, the way would want to do it is kind of go to a TV model," and then the distinction between the quality of TV and film has gone away. They're both equally viable, awesome storytelling formats. So the idea of, let's get a core group of writers and producers and directors — and even though I might not be the one writing Venom, I'll be in the meetings talking about how to make it interesting. We could be putting in easter eggs and planning ahead in the previous movies, and then that guy over there is going to write that movie, and Ed Solomon's gonna write another one with us. So having a committee, a board, of people who are creative, who are filmmaker, who just keep it all together, that's kind of going back to the way we started.
On why they're focusing on the Spider-Man villains:
One of our old sayings always is "Whatever you're afraid of, go there. Follow the fear. Don't turn away from the fear." So what you're saying is exactly the reason why we're doing it. Like, let's try and challenge ourselves. Do we think of ourselves as ballsy? No. We're the luckiest guys in the world. There's no courage involved in this. [Laughs] But thank you for saying so. But you're raising the correct point, which is head towards the difficult stuff.
It's early days when it comes to all this. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is next after this year and that's not out until 2016. Based on trailer teases, you'd think that would set up Doc Ock and Vulture. With those characters set, as well as whomever shows up in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Orci – along with Marc Webb, Alex Kurtzman, Jeff Pinkner, Ed Solomon and Drew Goddard - will have lots of groundwork set for Sinister Six and Venom. But will Spider-Man be a part? That anti-hero talk sounds like maybe not. What do you think?