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Roberto Orci Leaves The Amazing Spider-Man 3

Recently, there was a rumor that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 could be delayed a year, to 2017. Looks like it might not be a rumor at all and it’s being reported that Roberto Orci is no longer part of The Amazing Spider-Man franchise.

While he was originally slated to return to work on The Amazing Spider-Man 3 with Alex Kurtzman, his long-time collaborator on films including the first two Transformers films, and Star Trek, the two of them parted ways earlier this year to focus on new projects, so it doesn’t come as a surprise. Orci is also all but officially attached to direct the next Star Trek film, which is set to debut in 2016 and here’s what he revealed to IGN:

I don’t know what their plans are for that franchise. I don’t ever want to say never, but we have to figure out what their scheduling is in terms of when they want each movie. I’ve read probably as much as anyone else. There’s a love for the Sinister Six, the idea of Venom — there’s an idea of Spider-Man’s going to be one of these characters that’s part of our business. He’s such a popular character. Spider-Man’s not going to go away any time soon. When it all happens and how and all that has yet to be determined.

The Spider-Man franchise may also be in a bit of limbo, after the second outing didn’t meet studio expectations. I have to say that Sony’s estimates of hitting $1 billion is a bit ridiculous. The only superhero films to hit that amount in the recent past were The Avengers, Iron Man 3, and The Dark Knight Rises. Almost every other superhero film lands around the $700 million mark and, lo and behold, that’s about what The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made.

Part of the reason it didn’t do so well was some (deservedly) bad word of mouth. The film just wasn’t that good, and was mostly set-up for The Sinister Six. Marvel Studios learned how to build a unified franchise by accident, they created standalone films with nods and winks to the other films, without it really being the goal from the outset. Most of the connective tissue is in the post-credit scenes, and not in the films themselves.

Warner Bros. is making their play to create a unified comic book film universe with it’s upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Sony, in the meantime, released plans to create their own universe based on the Spider-Man, material by releasing the third and fourth film in 2016 and 2018, respectively. With it, they want to make spinoff films of Venom and The Sinister Six. Fox is also looking at maybe integrating its X-Men and Fantastic Four properties.

Here’s the thing, there are enough clues that Fox won’t be integrating both of its franchises, and Marvel Studios and DC Comics have a giant catalog of material to create many films. Sorry to tell you, Sony, Spider-Man?just doesn’t have enough characters to compete.

Roberto Orci is right in that Spider-Man is here to stay, and even if the next installment is delayed by a year or more, we’ll still see another film in the near future. The last film still made $700 million worldwide and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

For now, The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will open June 10, 2016.

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