Megan McDonnell's Marvel Pedigree Could Reportedly Shape Sony's Next 'Spider-Man' Series

Sony’s live-action Spider-Man television ambitions have taken a genuine beating over the past few years, bouncing between scrapped projects and shows that found critical acclaim but couldn’t hold onto their audience. Every new development update in this space now comes with an added layer of scrutiny, given how many false starts have already piled up.

That scrutiny only intensified after Prime Video’s recent cancellation of ‘Spider-Noir,’ a decision that came despite the Nicolas Cage-led series earning genuine critical praise and a haul of Emmy wins. Rather than walking away from the format entirely, Sony and Amazon appear to be regrouping with a more competitive development process built around several scripts rather than a single greenlit project.

Among the writers now attached to that slate is Megan McDonnell, whose name carries particular weight given her track record inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe specifically. According to an exclusive report, McDonnell is co-developing one of four Spider-Man universe scripts currently under consideration, working alongside ‘For All Mankind’ co-creators Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, according to details reported by The Ankler.

McDonnell first broke through on the Marvel side by writing two episodes of ‘WandaVision,’ the Disney+ series that reshaped how audiences thought about what a superhero show could actually look like tonally. Her episodes helped anchor the show’s early sitcom pastiche format before it unraveled into something far stranger and more emotionally grounded, a tonal balancing act that became one of the series’ most praised qualities.

From there, she moved into feature work, co-writing ‘The Marvels’ alongside Nia DaCosta and Elissa Karasik, giving her direct experience shaping a larger-scale, multi-character MCU story rather than a single contained arc. She followed that with writing duties on ‘Agatha All Along,’ where she also served as a consulting producer and on-set writer, deepening her involvement in shepherding a project from script through production.

McDonnell’s most recent Marvel credit places her even closer to the kind of character-first spinoff Sony may be hoping to replicate. She’s currently attached to ‘VisionQuest,’ an upcoming series still in development that centers on Paul Bettany’s Vision character, suggesting Marvel and its partners continue to trust her specifically with smaller-scale, character-driven corners of larger franchises rather than sprawling ensemble stories.

Pairing McDonnell with Nedivi and Wolpert is an interesting creative combination on paper. While McDonnell brings distinctly Marvel-flavored tonal instincts, honed on shows that blend genre pastiche with genuine emotional stakes, Nedivi and Wolpert’s background on ‘For All Mankind’ suggests a grounded, politically aware approach to world-building that has little precedent in Sony’s Spider-Man corner so far.

That combination could point toward a project aiming for something more character-focused and tonally distinct from the studio’s past attempts to build blockbuster franchises out of characters like Morbius or Madame Web. Given how differently ‘Spider-Noir’ approached its 1930s period setting compared to a more conventional superhero series, Sony and Amazon seem genuinely interested in letting each competing script carve out its own identity rather than forcing a single house style across the board.

None of the four scripts currently in contention have had their specific characters or premises revealed, and Sony has been careful not to treat this development slate as a guaranteed pipeline to series orders. Still, McDonnell’s specific pedigree, particularly her ongoing work reshaping how Marvel handles more intimate character studies, makes her project one of the more intriguing wildcards among the four currently being weighed.

Whether her script becomes one of the one or two ultimately picked up remains entirely uncertain at this stage. Given her track record of finding unexpected emotional depth in Marvel properties that could have easily stayed surface-level, though, it’s easy to see why her involvement has fans paying closer attention than usual to this particular development race.