Despite the fact Amy Pascal is stepping down from her post as co-chairman at Sony, it doesn’t mean she’s out of the game as her’s is just one of the names mentioned in a press release announcing Sony will team with Marvel Studios and Disney when it comes to the further adventures of Spider-Man.
A new Spider-Man (yes, Andrew Garfield is out) will appear first in an upcoming Marvel film within Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU) at Disney before the character gets his next solo feature film with Marvel’s Kevin Feige producing alongside Pascal. Following Spider-Man’s appear in an MCU feature, Sony Pictures will release the next solo Spider-Man feature on July 28, 2017, a date previously occupied by Thor: Ragnarok, which has now moved to November 3, 2017.
Marvel has also moved other dates around to make way for the development, which means Black Panther will now arrive on July 6, 2018 (was November 3, 2017), Captain Marvel arrives November 2, 2018 (was July 6, 2018) and Inhumans arrives July 12, 2019 (was November 2, 2019).
Spider-Man’s next introduction will be a collaborated effort, bringing what the press release describes as a “new creative direction for the web slinger”. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.
When Spidey will first appear is obviously up for debate as there has been word Marvel originally wanted him to appear in Captain America: Civil War and there are rumors suggesting Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1 may be the starting place. Who knows, I’m sure within the next 24 hours there will be posts suggesting the “Top Ten Ways Marvel Could Introduce Spider-Man into the MCU” so I’ll leave that sort of speculation to the experts.
Whether or not this will be an ongoing collaboration is unknown, or if current MCU characters will bleed over into the new Spidey, or if the X-Men will some day get in on the action. Who knows, for now, just know the MCU is getting bigger.
This all comes after Sony and director Marc Webb were unable to reignite mass interest in Spider-Man on the big screen with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 bringing in $708.9 million worldwide on a budget well north of $200 million, which is to say the profits just weren’t there along with a lot of negative reviews and audience response.
