People Were Excited About Olivia Wilde’s Superhero Movie Until They Found Out Sony Was Involved
Many people know about Olivia Wilde through her work on the medical drama, House, but she’s become more than just an actress in recent years.
In 2019, she made her directorial debut with Booksmart, and it was a massive critical success that allowed her to quickly become one of the most in demand young directors in Hollywood. She’s gotten many job offers, and one of the more recent ones has been from Marvel.
So far, it’s unknown what exactly the movie is called or will be about, but it’ll be centered around a woman and Sony will also be involved. While Marvel fans were excited to hear this news, they were also bummed out to hear that the movie will be made in cooperation with Sony.
How Olivia Wilde got the gig
It’s no secret that Hollywood has a shortage of female directors, and to a lesser extent, a shortage of stories about women. While most genres have made big strides to fix this issue, comic book movies have been slow to change on this front.
For example, despite introducing a female superhero, Black Widow, in Iron Man 2, Marvel didn’t make a solo movie featuring a female superhero until 2019, a full nine years after Iron Man 2 premiered. Marvel has made strides to fix this, as Marvel has given Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow her own solo movie.
On top of that, Marvel has given women job opportunities behind the camera, too, as directors like Chloe Zhao and Cate Shortland are working on Marvel films. This is where Wilde fits into the picture, since she’s clearly a skilled director who just needs the opportunity to show her craft. Marvel and Sony has given her that opportunity, but fans have mixed feelings about this.
How fans reacted to this news
Marvel fans, especially on Reddit, welcomed the idea of Wilde directing a superhero movie. Many fans loved her movie, Booksmart, so they’re confident that she’ll knock this movie out of the park, too. That said, there are a lot of unknowns about this movie. However, it is known that it’ll be related to Spider-Man. In the Spider-Man comics, there are plenty of female superheroes that the movie could be based on.
The most obvious choice would be Spider-Woman, but there’s also Spider-Gwen, Silk, and many more. Sometimes Marvel and Sony likes to adapt the popular comics, but as Guardians of the Galaxy showed, Marvel isn’t afraid of adapting the lesser-known characters, either.
But, since this movie will involve Sony, Marvel fans were not very happy about this aspect. Many Marvel fans are still hurt by Sony and Marvel’s recent fight over Spider-Man, and some of those fans still hate Sony for that.
That said, other Marvel fans just didn’t like the universe that Wilde’s movie will be based in. Like one fan said, “It will be in the Venom/Morbius universe. Ugh.”
The complicated relationship between Marvel and Sony
Due to a lot of legal issues, Sony still owns Spider-Man when it comes to the movies, which is why Sony has been working with Marvel for the last few years to make the most recent Spider-Man movies featuring Tom Holland.
That said, Sony also owns the movie rights to a bunch of other characters that are from Spider-Man’s comics.
For one reason or another, Sony has decided to create its own universe for those characters, which it calls the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, or the SPUMC.
It’s not entirely clear if this universe is connected to the MCU or not, but Marvel fans haven’t been happy about the SPUMC so far. Venom was part of the SPUMC, and it was not well-received. The upcoming movie, Morbius will also be part of this universe, as will Wilde’s movie.
