Deadline announced yesterday that Olivia Wilde has signed on with Sony Pictures to direct a female-centered Marvel movie. Wilde is known for starring in movies like Tron: Legacy and Cowboys and Aliens and recently made her directing debut in 2019 with the coming-of-age comedy Booksmart. She quickly became a hot commodity in Hollywood after Booksmart was praised by both fans and critics and became an instant teenage classic.
After Deadline tweeted that Wilde would be directing a new superhero movie for Sony, Wilde re-tweeted the post with an emoji of a spider.
— olivia wilde (@oliviawilde) August 19, 2020
Wilde’s re-tweet led to speculation that the movie would center around the legendary Marvel comic Spider-Woman. The first and most popular iteration of Spider-Woman tells the story of a character named Jessica Drew who gained her powers after she was injected with a serum of spider’s blood. Her powers included super strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and resistance to toxins. She also had the ability to shoot organic webs from her wrists. It is also possible however, that the movie will center around Spider-Gwen, another character in the Spider-Man universe. She is a younger character with similar powers to Spider-Man and was popularized in the 2018 animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
If Wilde is in fact directing a Spider-Woman film, this would be the character’s first big screen and live-action appearance.
Olivia Wilde is a part of a new wave of female directors that include Wonder Woman’s Patty Jenkins, helming big-budget superhero films. She is the fifth female director to work on a superhero movie, and the first to direct a superhero movie for Sony. A Spider-Woman movie would also be one of few superhero movies with a female lead.
Until recently, studios were convinced that no one wanted to see a female-led superhero movie and executives would often cite Supergirl and Catwoman, two films that were universally panned and released decades apart, as examples. They were, of course, proven wrong after the success of 2017’s Wonder Woman, which made over $800 million at the box office.
Since then, a number of films centered around female heroines directed by women have been greenlit by studios. Patty Jenkins returned to the DC Extended Universe to direct Wonder Woman 1984 and Nia DICosta was recently tapped to direct the sequel to Captain Marvel for Marvel Studios. With the success of Booksmart and the growing popularity of Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters, Olivia Wilde’s Spider-Woman Film is sure to be a hit.
