It was predicted, and now it’s come to pass: an upcoming movie in Sony Entertainment’s Amazing Spider-Man franchise will feature the Sinister Six. But, the movie this collection of Spidey villains are set to appear in isn’t The Amazing-Spider 3; according to Deadline, it’s a spinoff film starring the Six themselves. And that’s not all. Along with Sinister Six, Sony has plans for another Spidey-spinoff starring another of the wall-crawler’s foes: Venom. For those of you who aren’t comic book readers or don’t remember 2007 (when Spider-Man 3 came out), Venom is a character who comes about when an alien life form called the Symbiote attaches itself  to a human being and makes this:

The human in question was played by Topher Grace in Spider-Man 3, but the version of the character presented there was not warmly received by fans, so much so that filmmaker Adi Shankar and Ryan Kwanten (True Blood) made a short film with a better depiction of the character.

The Sinister Six is a team of villains (you guess how many, with an ever rotating roster). All the bad guys shown so far in the Amazing series – the Lizard in the first film; Electro, Rhino, and the Goblin in the trailer for the second, with Vulture and Doctor Octopus hinted at – have been members at some point.

You may find the idea of films starring villains odd, but in the comic books Venom sometimes reassigned as an anti-hero (i.e. he only eats bad people). The other villains are shown in both comics and film to be more complex than just up evil people. Consider this: at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man (SPOILERS!) Curt Connors aka the Lizard (Rhys Ifans) seems to regret his actions. Maybe the mystery man in the shadows who appears in his cell recruits him into a team of super-powered criminals. Maybe the Sinister Six could be the Dirty Dozen of supervillains – performing dangerous missions for the government to earn their freedom. Maybe we’ll get hints of these spinoffs on May 2, 2014 when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes to theaters.