It shocked millions of fans when Marvel and Sony announced they couldn’t reach an appropriate deal to keep Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the MCU.
There seemed to be a tiny glimmer of hope as negotiations were continuing, however, Sony’s CEO has since clarified that “the door is closed” on a Marvel/Sony partnership for the moment.
This is a huge disappointment for fans who have loved having Spider-Man as part of the MCU and it also makes people wonder if the only reason this version of Spider-Man has had so much success is because of Marvel’s involvement.
Two people who aren’t shocked at the news are Joe and Anthony Russo, the brothers who co-directed all of Holland’s MCU movies.
In an interview with the Daily Beast, Anthony said he and Joe weren’t surprised about the breakdown of the deal, because it was so difficult to make the first time around.
Anthony said, “I think that’s why Joe and I are not so devastated or surprised that there’s been a falling-out, because it was so hard to make it happen in the first place.”
The Russo Brothers revealed it was them who pushed Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige to put the deal together, adding that Feige didn’t really mind if the deal didn’t go ahead in the first place.
Joe explained, “It wasn’t easy. Kevin went through a lot. There were a lot of ups and downs, and he kept walking into our office and we’d go, ‘Look, we’ve got to do it with [Sony],’ and he’d go, ‘OK, I’ll figure it out,’ and walk back into his.
“He was looking for the way out. He wanted to open that door and have us go, ‘We figured it out! We don’t need Spider-Man!’ because it’s a lot of work to get two major corporations to play nice with each other, and the fact that it happened at all, we should all be dancing and celebrating that we got that little bit of time.”
He’s probably right, despite Spidey’s time in the MCU being brief, it was pretty damn awesome that we had him at all. However, it will be very interesting to see where Sony takes Peter Parker next as it really seemed as though Spidey was being built up to be the next Iron Man.
While there’s no hope for another Sony/Marvel deal in the near future, there’s always the possibility of something happening later on.