Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe gets underway this week with the arrival of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and while Marvel Studios has laid out a clear roadmap of releases through to 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty last year, there is one big question left unanswered: how and where – if at all – does Spider-Man fit into all this?
2021’s multiverse-spanning Spider-Man: No Way Home marked the final solo outing of the most-recent deal between Disney and Sony to allow Marvel to use the web-slinger into the MCU. And, while producer Amy Pascal seemed to let slip that the studios were already planning another trilogy of MCU Spidey movies starring Tom Holland, that was quickly downplayed by Sony, which is itself building out its own shared superhero universe of Spider-Man-related characters and will presumably be looking to introduce an incarnation of the web-slinger sooner rather than later.
Well, fans hoping to see more of Spidey mixing it with the Avengers will likely be relieved to hear the latest update from Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, who has confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that “All I will say is that we have the story. We have big ideas for that, and our writers are just putting pen to paper now.”
As we saw at the end of No Way Home, Holland’s Peter Parker has been forgotten by the world at large as a result of Doctor Strange’s spell, with the young hero returning to the anonymity of street level heroics as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Although the rights situation regarding solo movies remains unresolved (at least officially), the current Disney and Sony deal is believed to include another Holland/Spider-Man appearance in a non-Spider-Man movie, meaning he could theoretically pop up anywhere over the next couple of years.
However, Spidey’s already been on the shelf for over a year now, and we’d be very surprised if Sony will be happy to sit on its biggest cash cow and wait around until Secret Wars or beyond to get another Spider-Man movie out onto the big screen. Perhaps we’ll see Holland’s Peter Parker make universe-hopping sojourn to Sony’s Spider-Man Universe to keep him busy in the meantime.
Are you excited to see more Spider-Man movies from Marvel and Sony? How do you think the wall-crawler will factor into Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
