Sony says 'door is closed' on Spider-Man returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe
"Kevin didn't do all the work."
- Best New Journalist 2019 Australian IT Journalism Awards
MCU Spider-Man is no more.
Bad news, Spider-Man fans hoping Peter Parker will swing back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe . The Sony-Marvel Spider-Man relationship looks very much to be severed.
"For the moment the door is closed," Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra said at Variety's Entertainment & Technology summit Thursday.
A deal between Marvel and Sony saw Tom Holland's Spider-Man join the Avengers in the MCU. But that deal expired with Spider-Man: Far From Home, a massive success for Sony, raking $1 billion at the box office to become its highest grossing movie of all time.
Marvel super-producer Kevin Feige was seen to be a huge part of that, and going forward Marvel's Disney overlords wanted a greater cut of box office revenue from future Spider-Man films.
That's not in the cards. Still, according to Vinciquerra, there's "no ill will" between Sony and Marvel and Feige might be "stretched incredibly thin" anyway with the huge swathe of new Marvel heroes announced at Comic-Con 2019, including Blade and The Eternals, along with prequels and sequels.
"We had a great run with [Feige] on Spider-Man movies," Vinciquerra said. "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."
Vinciquerra pointed to the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller-produced Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as one of its non-Marvel Spider-Man success stories. And there's a lot more to come, including a Venom sequel, a Morbius film starring Jared Leto, and "five or six" shows based on the Spider-Man world.
Welcome to Sony's Spider-Man universe.
"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," Vinciquerra said.
"I think we're pretty capable of doing what we have to do here."
