Everything was so simple with regards to Spiderman back in the Sam Raimi days. Nowadays, it’s a little more complicated but also, a little more connected than we originally thought.
The confusion originally stemmed from the Spiderman’s appearance in Captain America: Civil War, and his proper introduction into the MCU set to culminate with the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming. This came about thanks to Sony head Amy Pascal negotiating a deal with Marvel after Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man reboots were met with average box office takings and tepid reviews.
The resulting deal struck between (then) Sony head Pascal and Marvel allowed for Marvel to take creative reign of the character and have him appear in a set number of MCU films, while Sony would produce and distribute Homecoming.
Since then however, Sony has been forging ahead with their own comic book universe, apparently sans Spiderman, with the upcoming Venom and Silver & Black movies.
The understanding seemed to be that although Sony were creating a set of films that existed within the original Spiderman universe, it wouldn’t be the one shared by the current incarnation of the web slinger, at least not until a new deal was renegotiated or the current one expired. Well, perhaps not.
In an interview alongside director Paul Feige, Pascal stated: “Well those movies will all take place in the world that we are now creating for Peter Parker. They’ll be adjuncts to it, it may be different locations but it will still all be in the same world, and they will be connected to each other as well”.
Sony had previously stressed that the Sony and Marvel universes were not connected to the Peter Parker movies, so this is surprising. Does that mean Tom Holland‘s Spiderman has a chance of appearing in the Sony Comic Book Universe? “There’s a chance! There’s always a chance,” Pascal said.
While this seems surprising on paper, perhaps we should have expected something like this. While it’s odd to see studios partnering up, money talks, and right now and for the foreseeable future superheroes are the most valuable capital in Hollywood.
If both Sony and Marvel can both profit from using a character – and who knows, potentially sharing other characters too – they’d be naive to leave money on the table.
This is an interesting development, one that feels like there’s perhaps a little more to it behind the scenes that may slowly unravel itself down the line. With the MCU being the most powerful interconnected universe in Hollywood, other studios would love to strike deals to get themselves a piece of the pie. One thing’s for sure though, it’s an amazing time to be a comic book movie fan.
#Peace.Love.Spiderman
