Sorry Marvel and Tom Holland fans but the MCU has suffered its biggest loss since Thanos triumphed in Infinity War.
According to Deadline, Marvel Studios and Sony have failed to reach a new agreement over the Spider-Man franchise and any new Spidey films will now be made without the involvement of Marvel’s head honcho, Kevin Feige.
So in short, Tom Holland’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man is out of the MCU.
From a business point of view, this whole shake-up makes sense. Sony, who owns the rights to the Spider-Man films, initially made a deal with Marvel Studios that introduced Peter Parker to the MCU. This deal was arranged so that while Marvel basically had full creative control for any Spidey film, it only got around 5% of the money earned while Sony got the rest.
Seeing as how Spider-Man: Far From Home raked in over $1 billion and is the highest grossing Spidey film ever, Marvel wanted a bigger slice of the pie and went back to Sony with a 50/50 co-financing deal, which Sony reportedly balked at.
Despite all of Peter Parker’s powers at his disposal, even he is no match for the biggest evil in the world: money.
So where does this leave MCU now that Sony has taken back its toys in a huff and decided to go at it alone (again)?
Well this will screw the MCU in the short term for starters since it can’t make any reference to the web-slinger going forward or vice versa. This is problematic as Far From Home clearly sets up Spider-Man as a key figure for the MCU’s future post-Tony Stark.
There will be whole heap of course-correcting going on within Marvel now that ol’ Pete is out but that should all shake out given enough time. And while Spidey may be gone, Feige has more than enough toys to fill that gap now that Disney has the X-Men, Deadpool, and Fantastic Four to play with.
As for Tom Holland and his version of Peter Parker, Deadline says there are two more Spider-Man movies in the works but Homecoming and Far From Home director Jon Watts doesn’t have a deal to direct those.
And barring any dramatic developments, Feige and the rest of Marvel’s creative team likely won’t be involved either, which is quite worrying from a quality perspective given how the last few Sony-produced films weren’t exactly, well, good.
Having said that, Sony is finding success with its own comic cinematic universe after the surprising success of 2018’s Venom and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse so it makes sense why they think they’re ready for another go around with Spidey.
Plus it means we could see a crossover flick between Spidey and Tom Hardy’s Venom, which should at the very least be more interesting than when we last saw those two characters appeared onscreen together in Spider-Man 3.
This bombshell will have big consequences on Marvel and Sony on both a creative and financial level. How this all ultimately shakes out is still up in the air. But who knows, maybe everyone will kiss and make up and all will be well in the MCU. Negotiations are reportedly still going as we speak.
Or maybe we’ll get a bunch of new Spider-Man movies where Tom Holland awkwardly talks to Tom Hardy about his adventures with the Avengers without actually mentioning anyone’s name because of legal reasons.