In October, it was announced that Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinkner, the writing team behind The Amazing Spider Man 2, were joining together again to script the third installment of the Spider Man film series, The Amazing Spider Man 3. Now, sources are reporting that Sony has hired those three writers, plus Ed Solomon and Drew Goddard to work on a large-scale story that will encompass several films.

In Sony's official release, Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad said, “The Spider-Man film franchise is one of our studio’s greatest assets. We are thrilled with the creative team we have assembled to delve more deeply into the world that Marc, Avi and Matt have begun to explore in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. We believe that Marc, Alex, and Drew have uniquely exciting visions for how to expand the Spider-Man universe in each of these upcoming films.”

Currently, Kurtzman and Orci are working on the third installment of Amazing Spider-Man. As part of the deal,  THR reported that Kurtzman, Orci and Solomon will write Venom, which "centers on the black costumed villain that already made his big screen debut in the third Spider-Man movie of the Sam Raimitrillogy, that Kurtzman will direct. Goddard, meanwhile, will write, with an eye to direct, The Sinister Six, which will focus on Spider-Man’s villains."

The Spider-man franchise has been very successful. So far, since it began in 2002, the four -movie franchise has made $3.2 billion worldwide for Sony and Columbia.

Borys Kit from THR pointed out that "the building of a movie universe seems to be the major trend for studios right now and stems directly from Marvel Studios' success with The Avengers and creating its own shared cinematic universe in which separate movies are connected by events and characters. It mimics the idea that came from the creation of the Marvel Universe in the 1960s comics … Sony's announcement now puts it into the universe-creating game, along with the others."

In other recent Hollywood news, NBC announced that it is adapting Rosemary’s Baby and has given the green light to a four-hour miniseries based on the novel. Writers Scott Abbott and James Wong will be penning the screenplay for the project. Check out the ScreenCraft post.