After the lukewarm (at best) reception to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony Pictures agreed to allow Marvel Studios to reboot the character entirely and cast Tom Holland as a new take on Peter Parker for the MCU. This proved to be a smart move and succeeded in revitalizing the franchise, but it's now come to light that things weren't exactly plain sailing in the buildup to this deal being finalized.
Initially, Sony wanted Marvel to come aboard to help with the development of a third TASM movie, but Kevin Feige clearly saw the writing on the wall(crawler) and instead proposed that both studios join forces to completely reimagine the iconic hero.
The following is documented in the new book, The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of The MCU.
"The only way I know how to do anything is to just do it entirely," Feige is believed to have said in his pitch, which reportedly did not sit very well with Sony's Amy Pascal. "So why don't you let us do it? Don't think of it as two studios. And don't think of it as giving another studio back the rights. No change of hands of rights. No change of hands of money. Just engage us to produce it."
"At first, I was super resentful," Pascal admits. "I think I started crying and threw him out of my office, or threw a sandwich at him - I'm not sure which... By the fifth movie, we weren't giving them anything new. And I have to be honest about it, we were trying so hard to be different, we even went into places to be different that we shouldn't have."
Holland made his MCU debut in Captain America: Civil War, and the rest is history. This collaboration between the studios has seen a few bumps in the road since (things almost fell apart completely after the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home), but the British actor will reprise the role for the sixth time this December in No Way Home.
Spidey's MCU future beyond that is unclear, but Holland did recently state that this latest movie is being viewed as "the end of a franchise."
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