Is Spider-Man’s time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe limited? “Spider-Man: Homecoming” Co-producer Amy Pascal hinted that may be the case at CinemaCon Tuesday, saying in an interview with Cosmic Book News that following the already agreed upon sequel to “Homecoming,” the webslinger might once again be restricted to appearing only in films from Sony.
“One of the things that I think is so amazing about this experience is that you don’t have studios deciding to work together to make a film very often,” said Pascal, who served as Chairperson of Sony’s Motion Pictures Group until stepping down in 2015. “In fact, it may never happen again — after we do the sequel.”
She continued:
“Because Sony and Disney and Marvel all decided that the right thing to do was to allow Peter Parker and Spider-Man to be in the MCU, and to work with the Marvel guys and have them produce this film, and I think that was a very rare thing for three companies to do and a very brilliant thing for them to decide to do because there are only so many stories that you know you can tell again and again and again about Spidey, and this is something that we would never been able to do in any other way. So, it was a very selfless thing that was very smart on the part of all the companies.”
Sony declined to comment on the matter. However, a person with knowledge of the deal between Marvel and Sony told TheWrap that Pascal’s comments are not true. So for now at least, it would seem Spidey will remain part of the Marvel Movie family.
Marvel Studios licensed Spider-Man, and several related concepts and characters, to Sony in 1999. This led to Sony’s successful Sam Raimi-directed “Spider-Man” trilogy starring starring Tobey Maguire, as well as the rebooted “Amazing Spider-Man” films starring Andrew Garfield. As a result, Marvel was unable to include the wall crawler as part of its burgeoning Cinematic Universe when it started making films in-house, beginning with 2008’s “Iron Man.”
However, following the tepid reception for 2014’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” and the company’s infamous computer hacking scandal the same year, Sony reached a deal with Disney, which purchased Marvel in 2009, to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The new version of Spider-Man portrayed by Tom Holland, debuted in “Captain America: Civil War” and will also appear in the upcoming “Avengers: Infinity War,” in addition to “Homecoming” and its planned sequel.
Sony still retains full rights to Spider-Man characters like Black Cat, and Venom, and has recently announced plans for films involving these characters that would be unrelated to “Homecoming.”