The current deal in place between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios when it comes to how Spider-Man can be utilized on screen tends to lead to some confusion, and it sounds like there may be more to it than we realized.
As things stand, Sony maintains the rights to Spider-Man and all of his villains and supporting characters, but the deal allows Marvel Studios to have Tom Holland's wall-crawler appear in their movies (Avengers: Endgame, etc), while the solo Spider-Man films remain Sony/Marvel co-productions.
Sony has been forging ahead with its own "SSMU" universe, with movies that don't feature Spider-Man at all and focus on the likes of Venom, Morbius, and the upcoming Kraven the Hunter, and this may limit the number of characters Marvel can use.
According to Daniel Richtman, "Whenever Sony uses a villain, they block Marvel Studios from using them, which means there aren't many left for MCU Spider-Man to face off against."
We're not sure exactly what this means for a Sony/Marvel co-production (the upcoming Spider-Man 4, for example), but would Sony really prohibit Marvel from using a character in a project they also have a major stake in? We do know that having Holland's Spidey face-off against Venom (Tom Hardy) continues to be a complicated issue, and this could explain why.
Even if this is accurate, Spider-Man has one of the most extensive and varied bad guy rosters of any superhero, so there are still plenty of villains available to Marvel Studios. Also, the Venom movies aside, the SSMU hasn't exactly been a massive success, and the failure of Madame Web has led to speculation that Kraven underperforming could spell the end of the franchise.
Who knows - maybe the studios will be hashing out a new deal that's a lot more beneficial to Marvel soon enough.
Rumors aside, we still know very little about how Spider-Man 4 is shaping up. Sony's Tom Rothman and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige are believed to have had some disagreements when it comes to the overall plot, with the latter hoping to scale the Multiverse elements back for a smaller story. Rothman, meanwhile, is said to want to capitalize on No Way Home's success by bringing Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back as their respective takes on Peter Parker.
Holland will, of course, return as the MCU's Spidey alongside Zendaya as MJ, but the actor is believed to be "growing wary" of playing the iconic hero, so this could be his final solo outing as the wall-crawler - though he will almost certainly play a part in one of both of the upcoming Avengers films.
"We have the best in the business working toward whatever the story might be," Holland said in a recent interview. "But until we’ve cracked it, we have a legacy to protect," Holland explained. "The third movie was so special in so many ways that we need to make sure we do the right thing."
No Way Home scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers are writing the script.