The saga of Spider-Man's arrival in the MCU was a fascinating one. It began with the Sony Hack and culminated with the announcement that Tom Holland would play Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War. During a recent Q&A, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige was asked about the work which went into bringing the wall-crawler into the world of The Avengers and, well, it was quite a struggle!
Apparently, it all started when Amy Pascal, then the head of Sony Pictures' Motion Pictures Group, met with Feige and suggested that he take a larger role in helping with The Amazing Spider-Man movies. Unsurprisingly, he refused to have his team provide script notes on those and instead made the ballsy move of suggesting that they take charge of the character's adventures moving forward instead.
"'Why don’t you just let us do it?'" he recalls asking Pascal. "Her version of the story was that she threw a sandwich at us (when I said that) — however, the meeting was then over." It was six months after that (when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 bombed) that she came back and the ball started rolling.
"When we were developing Captain America: Civil War we had a plan with and without Spider-Man since we were gearing up to shoot as we were negotiating with Sony to get Spider-Man," he explained, confirming that there was a version of the movie where Spider-Man wouldn't have shown up. Now, Marvel and Sony are teaming up for the Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel which hits in 2019.