When Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures worked out a deal for Spider-Man to be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, none of us really knew what that deal entailed. I thought Marvel would get to play with Spider-Man as much as they wanted to, but that doesn’t sound like that’s the deal that was made. It sounds like Spider-Man could only be a part of the MCU for a limited time.
Spider-Man made his big debut in Captain America: Civil War and is set to get his own film with Spider-Man: Homecoming. After that, he will appear in Avenger: Infinity War, and that will be followed by a second solo film. According to former Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal, after that sequel, Sony Pictures will regain full control of the character. When talking to CosmicBookNews, she explained:
“One of the things that I think is so amazing about this experience is that you don’t have studios deciding to work together to make a film very often. In fact it may never happen again, after we do the sequel. Because Sony, and Disney, and Marvel all decided that the right thing to do was to allow Peter Parker and Spider-Man to be in the MCU and to work with the Marvel guys and have them produce this film.
“I think that was a very rare thing for three companies to do, and a very brilliant thing for them to decide to do because there are only so many stories that you can tell again and again and again about Spidey, and this is something that we would have never been able to do in any other way.”
It sounds to me like after the Spider-Man sequel Sony will have to decide whether or not they want to stay in business with Marvel. That’s obviously not a guarantee. It would be a pretty big bummer to see Spider-Man leave the MCU after we get used to him being a part of it. But as you know, Sony is developing their own cinematic universe that will launch with Venom, and if that does well they’ll probably going to want to include Spider-Man in it. I don’t know why else they would want to yank him out of the MCU.
We’ve still got awhile to go before these decisions need to be made, but I hope that Sony will want to continue this Spider-Man sharing relationship with Marvel.