Sony’s live action Spider-Verse continues to not feature Spider-Man in Madame Web’s first trailer

Sony has dropped the first trailer for the next film set within its weird live-action, Spider-Man-less Spider-Verse, Madame Web.

It continues to baffle me that Sony is hellbent on creating some kind of Frankenstein live-action Spider-Verse without having a central Spider-Man from which it can spin off from. Sure, there’s Tom Holland, but he obviously belongs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Venom made some amount of sense as a solo outing as they’re an incredibly popular character (even if the fact they look like Spider-Man makes no sense in this case), but Madame Web, a film about a character that most people won’t know, certainly is a choice that was made.

The first trailer for Madame Web released today (you can watch it above), and yeah, it truly looks like a film where someone said “alright, who have we got the rights to.” It stars Dakota Johnson (The Social Network) as the titular Madame Web, aka Cassandra Webb, a paramedic with the ability to see into the future. Sometimes. Also, there’s some guy called Ezekiel, played by Tahar Rahim, who looks like Spider-Man, but isn’t Spider-Man, and he’s a bad guy? He’s from the comics too but, just, if we get into it here we’ll be stuck for hours.

It also features Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) as Julia Carpenter, Isabela Merced (Transformers: The Last Knight) as Anyway Corazon, and Celeste O’Connor (Ghostbusters: Afterlife) as Mattie Franklin, all of which are various Spider-peoples. It also features Emma Roberts (Hotel for Dogs) as Peter Parker’s mother Mary Parker for some reason? And Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation) as his uncle Ben? I’m struggling to understand all of the decisions being made here.

For the record, Madame Web isn’t exactly an immensely popular character either. She’s barely appeared in the comics, and she’s also technically a mutant, so I’m really not excited for the likely designed by committee backstory she’ll be getting. And let’s not even get started on the Kraven film. At least Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is quite good.

Madame Web doesn’t currently have a release date, but it is expected to release sometime in 2024.