A few days ago, an insider explained why there was no reason to get excited about rumors surrounding a secret Sony-Disney deal for Spider-Man, as there simply wasn’t any way it could happen as rumors describes. The news that Spider-Man was leaving the MCU came just a few weeks ago, right before Disney’s D23 Expo event and the extended Labor Day weekend. But we’ve got even more bad news for fans who were still expecting Sony and
Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra spoke at Variety’s Entertainment & Technology summit, which is where he said that “for the moment the door is closed” on the possibility of Spider-Man returning to the MCU. He did say that “it’s a long life,” implying that a deal might still be in the works at some point down the road, but he certainly didn’t seem optimistic.
The exec said there’s no “ill will” between Sony and Marvel, and he acknowledges that the studio is aware of the fan backlash to the news. It’s been “an interesting couple of weeks” for the studio, Vinciquerra said. The CEO seemed to shift the blame to Marvel, suggesting that Sony wasn’t thrilled at the fact that Kevin Feige is “stretched incredibly thin” with all the new additions to the MCU:
We had a great run with (Feige) on Spider-Man movies. We tried to see if there’s a way to work it out….the Marvel people are terrific people, we have great respect for them, but on the other hand, we have some pretty terrific people of our own. Kevin didn’t do all the work.
As we pointed out before, even though Sony seems to think it can replicate the success of Spider-Man: Far From Home and Homecoming on its own, its previous Spider-Man films prove that’s not likely to happen. Still, Vinciquerra seems to think it’ll all be fine going forward:
Spider-Man was fine before the event movies, did better with the event movies, and now that we have our own universe, he will play off the other characters as well. I think we’re pretty capable of doing what we have to do here.
Marvel proved with its MCU that it doesn’t need high-profile superheroes like Spider-Man to turn its movies into critically-acclaimed box office hits, although it doesn’t hurt having Spider-Man play nice with all its other superheroes. Sony, however, might not have an easy time starting from scratch with an MCU alternative that won’t be anywhere near as complex.
Sony is developing a Venom sequel, a picture based on Morbius, as well as “five or six” TV series that are set in the Spider-Man world, Variety reports. Also, we learned a few days ago that Spider-Man 3 is already in pre-production and a first script already exists, featuring some huge MCU influences. How all these properties will come together, especially since Sony lacks a streaming service to host all these TV series, is something we’ll have to wait to see.
