Female Spider-Man spinoff planned for 2017

Sony has been pretty full of surprises lately regarding the Spider-Man franchise. We are learning more about the Sinister Six along with learning that The Amazing Spider-Man 3 has been delayed until 2018. We now have information regarding a female Spider-Man spinoff reportedly planned for 2017.

This comes after much criticism of the superhero genre in general regarding the lack of female heroes. With the massive success of Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend, the fact that it is 44% female says a lot about the success of female based films. We also can cite films like Divergent, The Hunger Games, and Frozen.
Sony is still trying to do damage control after the ridiculous disappointing The Amazing Spider-Man 2 failed to make money at the box office. It has since become the lowest grossing Spider-Man film of all time. The last hope to save Sony's singular superhero franchise revamp a little bit with new heroes and... a woman.
Many are speculating that this spinoff will be centered around Black Cat (aka, Felicia Hardy). Hardy had a brief cameo in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, played by Felicity Jones, so she is the obvious choice to expand this franchise aside from the already planned Sinister Six and Venom movies. Other female possibilities could include Spider-Woman and Silver Sable.

I don't think this is by any means a stupid or bad move on Sony's part. If they have learned anything from what Marvel and Disney have done they should know by now that you can't carry a franchise based off of just one hero. If the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe was centered around Iron Man people would have abandoned it by now. They were smart and made separate movies for each character and found a way to tie them all together. If they put Peter Parker on the back burner for a while and focused on other characters for a bit I think it's possible for this franchise to have some revival and a renewed sense of interest.