Sony Pictures is determined to have its female-centric heroine comic book film for their Spider-Man universe. It has been announced that Marc Guggenheim is writing Jackpot, a film about a crime-fighting mom in the comics.
Guggenheim has written episodes of the comic series with Brian Reed and the story follows a superheroine with exceptional strength. Her first incarnation, Sara Ehret, is a scientist who is doing gene therapy research while pregnant and is exposed to “Lot 777,” a virus that rewrote the DNA in her cells. While her baby is born healthy, Sara realizes in addition to being a new mom she has superhuman strength after she is forced to save her family.
Eventually Sara Ehret grows tired of crime-fighting and the mantle is handed over to Alana Jobson, an ambitious friend who takes over the character but must ingest a Mutant Growth Hormone to live up to Jackpot’s superhuman abilities. Jobson is eventually killed when teaming with Spider-Man to track down the villain Menace and this forces Ehret to return to the job while keeping her identity secret as she raises a family.
After Sony scored a huge hit with Spider-Man spinoff Venom and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, the studio has made it their priority to expand their Spider-Man universe. Venom 2, now officially called Venom: Let There Be Carnage, is arriving next year along with Jared Leto playing Morbius. The film was slated for this summer but was pushed to March 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Equalizer scribe Richard Wenk is writing Kraven the Hunter and there are also films in development on the characters Silk and Nightwatch.
Guggenheim is an extensive career with comic book-related projects. He has worked on Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow while he has done work in comics on Aquaman, Amazing Spider-Man, and Superman/Batman.
