We're still waiting on Sony/Marvel to make an official announcement regarding Spider-Man 4 (as in, the fourth solo movie featuring Tom Holland's take on the wall-crawler), but reliable insider Jeff Sneider has shared some long-awaited production updates in the latest edition of his newsletter.
The news broke last night that the third season of Euphoria has been put on hold, and Sneider believes this was at least partially down to star Zendaya's commitment to return as MJ for the next Spider-Man movie, which will likely begin filming this September or October.
No Way Home director Jon Watts is not expected to return, and Sneider has heard that Justin Lin - who helmed five of the Fast and Furious movies as well as Star Trek Beyond - was in the mix to direct, and may still be. There are sure to be other filmmakers in contention, however, including the previously-rumoured Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods).
Sony's Tom Rothman and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige are rumored 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-scale 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.
We don't know if these issues have been resolved, but it's obviously a good sign if the movie does have a scheduled shoot date.
Holland will, of course, be back as the MCU's Spidey, but the actor is believed to be "growing wary" of playing the iconic hero, so this could be his final time in the red and blue suit.
During a recent interview, Holland said he feels that he's become too used to the "safety blanket of Spider-Man."
"I want to do things that scare me, things that make me uncomfortable. When you do what we do, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. This show is a perfect example of that. Ben is consistently telling me, if you don’t commit, they won’t believe you. The reason I wasn’t committing is because I was afraid. I’ve never done anything like this before. I got so used to the Marvel machine and the safety blanket of Spider-Man, feeling like I was protected. So, doing something like this was incredibly scary, but because it was so scary, it was so fulfilling and so rewarding. Going forward, if there’s something that I feel like I can’t do, I want to do that one. Playing a sort of stupid English doofus is not what I want to do because that’s my life, right?"
No Way Home scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers are currently working on the script, but we still don't know which of the Wall-Crawler's fearsome foes will be causing problems for Peter and co.
Most of Spidey's major bad guys have already been utilized in previous films (Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, etc), but a recent rumor claimed that the still untitled sequel will feature a villain we haven't seen in live-action yet.