Marvel has just gotten a leg (or eight) up on DC in the race to be first to produce a comic book superhero movie with a female lead.

According to Deadline, Sony Pictures will produce a Marvel superheroine-centered film for release in 2017. As Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man and his extended cast of friends and enemies, the movie will most likely set the spotlight on a character from the wall-crawler’s world.

This news comes after recently Roberto Orci, co-creator of Fringe and Sleepy Hollow, walked away from the future films The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and Venom. This development caused Amazing to be pushed back to a 2018 release. A Sinister Six film, featuring a group of Spider-Man villains led by Dr. Octopus, is still set for a 2016 premiere.

The Deadline article gives a list of possibilities of the still-unknown character, including the Black Cat, Firestar, and Spider-Woman. While Firestar did co-star with Spider-Man (and the X-Man Iceman, for some reason) in the cartoon series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, my money is on either the Black Cat or Spider-Woman. The Black Cat has been teased by filmmakers Sam Raimi and Marc Webb as possibly appearing in their respective franchises, with no sign of her yet, with the exception as a personal assistant named Felicia in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. This might be Felicia’s time to shine.

However, Sony might also lean toward using Spider-Woman, as it has Spider right there in the name. That tacit connection to ol’ Web-Head might be enough to entice moviegoers to give a relatively-unknown character (at least to non-comic book readers) a try. Further, with the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, director James Gunn has shown that the public will give no-name superheroes a chance if the story is given its proper due.

The announcement by Sony is suspiciously timely, as the first pictur of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was recently revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con by Warner Bros. ,which produces films based on DC Comics’ stable of characters, including the Amazonian princess.

[Source: Deadline]