While The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was supposed to set up a larger world for Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker, the movie underperforming resulted in Sony abandoning that continuity and striking up an alliance with Marvel to feature a new Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Among the scrapped ideas as a result of this decision was that Felicity Jones’ Felicia Hardy could become The Black Cat, just like in the comics. Nevertheless, Jones is still keen on reprising Felicia within the MCU, saying:
I’d love to play her again. She’s a great character. There was never anything written down that that would definitely happen. It was more just…I like playing characters where there is a little bit extra to play with and it was just fun to play someone who has this other identity. I just loved the idea of that character, I just think it’s really fun.
Felicia Hardy’s potential turn to the Black Cat life definitely wasn’t teased in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as her role in that movie was limited to being Harry Osborn’s assistant and later telling Harry that she’d overheard that the special spider venom was being kept in the Special Projects division of OsCorp. This year marks half a decade since The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s release, and during that time Felicity Jones has become a more famous actress thanks to her performances in The Theory of Everything, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and On the Basis of Sex. Still, she made it clear to Yahoo Movies that if the opportunity came along, she’d appreciate getting to reprise Felicia Hardy and actually showcase the character’s duality.
It’s not often that an actor gets to play the same character in two different continuities of the same franchise (Judi Dench being M in the James Bond movies comes to mind), and as far as the MCU goes, I suspect that if Felicia Hardy were to be included, Felicity Jones wouldn’t be called to play the role. Assuming she and Spider-Man were to have some kind of relationship, the Marvel executives would presumably want someone closer to Tom Holland’s age, not to mention allowing more freedom with putting a different spin on Felicia.
However, Sony also has its own, separate live action Spider-Man universe going, albeit without the Wall-Crawler actually involved. Venom kicked off this new franchise last October, and in addition to the symbiote-powered anti-hero returning for a sequel, Morbius the Living Vampire is also slated for release. There were also plans for Black Cat and Silver Sable to appear in a movie together, but it was announced last summer that these characters would instead lead their own separate movies. If Sony wants some star power on its side, perhaps it could talk with Felicity Jones about leading the Black Cat movie. Whether that movie were to confirm that this Spider-Man universe exists in the same continuity as The Amazing Spider-Man movies or not, at least this would be a good chance for Jones to properly suit up as Black Cat and fight some bad guys.
Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for all the latest Spider-Man-centric film news. You can see Tom Holland’s version of Web-Head later this year in Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home.
