Of all the superhero cinematic universes out there, Sony’s is the weirdest. Marvel has the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has Marvel characters; and Warner Bros. has the DC Extended Universe, which has DC characters. Sony has the confusingly named “Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters,” which involves characters like Venom, Morbius and Kraven the Hunter. You see, Sony has the rights to Spider-Man and his rogues gallery, who are Marvel characters, but not the rest of the Marvel catalog, which belongs to Marvel. As for Spider-Man himself, Sony and Marvel share custody, allowing Tom Holland’s Peter Parker to appear in Avengers movies produced by Marvel as well as solo outings produced by Sony.
It’s all a mess, but Sony is trying to simplify things just a little, according to Digital Spy. At Cinema Con yesterday, they announced that they were rebranding their clusterf**k of a cinematic universe to “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe,” which is at least less unwieldy than “Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters.”
Will Spider-Man be a part of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe?
It does raise new questions, though. So far, Spider-Man himself hasn’t appeared in these Spider-Man universe movies, which is odd — like, Venom is a movie about a famous Spider-Man villain, but Spider-Man is nowhere to be seen, nor does it look like he’ll be in the upcoming sequel. Does renaming the endeavor to “Sony’s Spider-Man Universe” mean that Spider-Man will actually show up?
And if he does show up, what form will he take? Will he be played by Tom Holland? The upcoming movie Spider-Man: No Way Home is the final solo film Holland is under contract for, but he’s said he’d be happy to come back for more. Or maybe Sony will introduce a new live-action Spider-Man to mix it up with Venom and Morbius and company; perhaps they could bring in Miles Morales and have him frontline the franchise?
Perhaps we’ll get some answers in No Way Home, which comes out on December 17. That movie has Holland’s Spider-Man visiting alternate universes, which could open the door to all kinds of crossover shenanigans. In fact, some fans think they’ve already spotted Venom in the movie. Click the big button below to read more about that:
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