So there’s been some confusing statements in the past weeks over Spider-Man: Homecoming and its connection to Sony’s own productions featuring Venom, Black Cat, and other Spider-Man characters. Marvel and Sony gave many fans a reason to be excited when they struck a deal to bring Spider-Man to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the failure of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Tom Holland made his debut in Captain America: Civil War, but the new deal didn’t throw out all of Sony’s plans for their own “Spider-verse.”
The company announced Venom earlier this year, with Tom Hardy starring as Eddie Brock, and also have plans for a Black Cat/Silver Sable film that might take a faster track given the success of Wonder Woman. These films were quickly distanced from Spider-Man and the MCU, but comments by Amy Pascal earlier in the week painted a different picture and caused some confusion. While Feige and those connected to Marvel Studios have said the films aren’t connected, Pascal made it clear that Tom Holland was Spider-Man and Homecoming is in the same world as Venom and their other films.
It could just be some public negotiating on Sony’s part or perhaps there is some real confusion over where everything stands. Kevin Feige addressed the Sony deal during a chat with JoBlo and reiterated that Spider-Man is the only connection to the MCU at this moment:
Right now, Spidey is in the MCU and it’s just Spidey. Civil War, Homecoming, we’ve already shot a lot of Tom Holland’s scenes in the upcoming Avengers films, and we’re just starting to solidify our plans for Homecoming 2 – we won’t call it that, whatever it is – which is exciting because it’ll be the first MCU movie after untitled Avengers in 2019. It’ll be the way Civil War informed everything in Homecoming, those movies will launch him off into a very new cinematic universe at that point. Those five movies are what we’re focusing on.
Marvel reportedly has a trilogy of films planned for Spider-Man at this moment, but it does seem like everybody is overlooking a clear point within this entire situation. If something is in the MCU now, that doesn’t mean it can’t be in the MCU in the future. It also doesn’t mean that these films can’t coexist without being directly connected.
The comments from Feige seem to indicate that they’re not involved in the plans for Venom and the other Spider-verse films from Sony, but they’re not ruling out a connection across the board. His follow-up comments about Venom specifically seem to support this and place the film in a spot as a pseudo-audition for entrance into the same realm as the other films:
They have rights to other characters, and I think they’re being very smart in saying ‘We have to make a great Venom movie.’ They’re off to a good start hiring Tom Hardy.
None of this is official by any means, but the idea that Spider-Man would be MCU while Sony does whatever it wants with everything else makes less sense than just having a loose connection. Not every comic character is an Avenger in the source books and we’ve seen that Marvel’s street level characters can exist on their own on Netflix without any appearances by Robert Downey Jr. or Chris Evans. And from what it seems, the reason Feige isn’t going as far as Sony is tied more to the current planning within the Marvel films and less to do with the rights between those companies.
It’s pretty clear that all of the Marvel films have been strung together in some form at this point, but all fans really want is the possibility that everybody can coexist in the future. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 proved you can have a stand-alone film with no real implications for the rest of the Marvel Universe. If Homecoming 2 is setting the tone for the post Avengers/Phase 3 era of the character, maybe we can expect something different. This also fits nicely with the reported plans to scale back the Marvel films after the Infinity War is complete.
(Via JoBlo)