New Villain, New Mary Jane for ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’

This year's reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise might not have been universally received as Spidey's best big-screen outing, but it did make quite a lot of money. So, unsurprisingly, Sony has decided to go ahead with a sequel to be directed by a returning Marc Webb. Now, reports have begun surfacing concerning the cast of the tentatively titled “Amazing Spider-Man 2.”

While the original three films focused entirely on Peter Parker's most famous love interest, Mary Jane Watson, The Amazing Spider-Man went back to the web head's original, ill-fated significant other, Gwen Stacy (played by Emma Stone in the film). Now, however, Variety is reporting that Shailene Woodley is in early talks to play the new Mary Jane in the sequel. Woodley is probably best known for her role in last year's The Descendants.

A few character breakdowns for possible villains in the sequel are also floating around Hollywood.

It seems that Electro is an early favorite for the position of primary antagonist in the follow-up. Electro, originally known as Maxwell Dillon, is a petty larcenist from the Amazing Spider-Man comic series that gains the ability to control electricity after being struck by lightning while working on a power line. It’s possibly worth noting that the post-credits scene in the first Amazing Spider-Man film featured some pretty obvious lightning effects and a mysterious, unidentified baddie.

While even Magneto considered him for a position in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (claiming that the character had powers rivaling his own), Electro has pretty much been a boring, small-time thug for the entire, regular run of the franchise. He also has just about the worst costume in the history of super-villains, so if they were to bring him into the film franchise you can bet that the screenwriters would likely do some serious reconfiguring of the character.

The same paper mentioning Electro’s possible appearance states that another, unspecified villain as well as Harry Osborn will be part of the cast. Hopefully, this won’t result in the same sort of muddled mess of villains that Spider-Man 3 contended with. The film is said to be going into production next year, so there’s still some time to deal with whom your friendly neighborhood Andrew Garfield will be facing off against in the sequel.

For some context concerning the Mary-Jane/Gwen Stacy situation, the two originally occupied a triangle shaped space in Spidey’s love life until Harry Osborn (aka the Green Goblin) threw Stacy off of a bridge in the original comics. A version of that scene was depicted the first Spider-Man movie with Mary Jane taking the place of Gwen. However, in the comics, Gwen Stacy wasn’t quite as lucky as her silver-screen replacement and the event became one of the most famous character deaths in comic books.