Who is Spider-Man character Madame Web and what could her film be about?

With Tom Holland's Spidey incarnation in a seemingly never-ending tug of war between Marvel and Sony, here's the background on Madame Web and how she could expand the Sony spider-verse...

• Spider-Man will return to the MCU for at least one more movie

Who is Madame Web?

Even by Marvel standards, Madame Web is one of the stranger additions to the Spider-Man character roster. Cassandra Webb is a blind, paralysed elderly woman connected to a life support system in the shape of a spiderweb, awfully convenient for a Spider-Man ally. She's incredibly powerful too, with psychic powers including telepathy, astral projection and seeing the future.

Madame Web is also technically a mutant, but don't expect that detail to pop up unless Sony want to complicate things with Disney – who now own the rights to the X-Men and mutants – further.

https://youtu.be/SxSvDb6L00w

Madame Web first appeared in the The Amazing Spiderman #210 in November 1980, when she helped the wall-crawler locate a criminal gang's captive. The psychic then popped up periodically to advise the web-head and give him cryptic clues and warnings until her untimely death at the hands of Kraven's allies.

She has also appeared in several TV and video game spin-offs, including the classic 90s cartoon where she was voiced by Stan Lee's late wife Joan B. Lee.

Several of those spin-offs imbued Madame Web with powers over reality and the multiverse, often bringing many webslingers together in a Spider-Verse-esque storyline - and this is why she may be key to Sony's fledgling film universe.

With her all-seeing powers and potential dimension-hopping abilities, Madame Web would be the perfect candidate to bring all these disparate spin-off characters together, as well as possibly bringing Tom Holland out of the MCU continuity somehow if Sony and Disney fall out again.

She could also introduce new characters, including other Spider-people if need be, and just generally link Sony's films together like a psychic Nick Fury. Why exactly she needs her own spin-off movie to do this however is anyone's guess, but her introduction gives Sony several possibilities going forward.

What will the Madame Web standalone film be about?

If her solo movie isn't focused on setting up a Sony shared universe, Madame Web doesn't have a ton of major storylines without Spidey.

The film could focus on Web's relationship with her granddaughter Charlotte Witter, the fourth Spider-Woman who ultimately turns into a super villain after being corrupted by Doctor Octopus. Alternatively they could portray the second Madame Web, Julia Carpenter, who received the original's powers after she was killed in the Grim Hunt storyline.

We're way off casting details yet, but our vote would be for Helen Mirren - just imagine the Oscar winner in that crazy web chair...