Is it time for a Spider-Man TV show?

[The Curmudgeon]

Spider-Man as a movie franchise is kinda poisonous right now, what with an unliked and unwelcome reboot that didn't exactly set the world alight. But now Spider-Man is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (tm), it opens the character up for a lot more possibilities.

We've seen the trailer for Civil War, so Spidey is now officially part of the gang. So once the planned tie in series of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage & Iron Fist and Punisher (I think that's the plan anyway) is done, what next for Marvel and Netflix?

Just imagine the great writing and action we've seen on Daredevil (two episodes in on Season two..damn, superb) and JJ..but put it in Spider-Man's world. Imagine that shit. Puny Parker in high school, fighting super villains on the side and haggling with JJJ for prices for his photographs. The villains. The supporting characters. A movie may not be what is right for Spidey right now, but a TV show could be amazing.

Spend a bunch of cash and make it happen, Netflix.

[trashcanman]

Fuck yeah, but that's the problem: lots of cash. TV depends on advertising usually and for Netflix, subscriptions, which just don't pay off the way that ticket sales do. That is to say that to offset the massive budget it would take to do characters like Vulture, Doc Ock, Venom, Gobbie, Sandman, and the like justice a Spidey series would need to be so massive that it would either need to draw in everybody who isn't already a subscriber or cause a rate hike to pay for itself. The sad thing is that the Spiderverse is so ridiculously deep that no mere movie series can do it justice. Television is simply the best medium for him, but budgetary constraints mean we are almost definitely going to have to make do with animated versions.

[The Curmudgeon]

Yeah, that's a good point. I think the idea behind comic book characters like Daredevil and Jessica Jones is they're grounded and, well, "real" for want of a better term, so there's no real need for boatloads of special effects. Imagine the cost of trying to make someone like Sandman not look terrible? Shit, even getting Spider-Man to swing around NYC would cost a fortune.

Sigh. Oh well. A nice idea, but yeah, animated will probably be the only way to go.