Comic book movie nerds everywhere have slowly been making peace with the fact that Spider-Man may not have a place in Sony’s upcoming superhero movieverse, so far featuring a Venom and Silver Sable/Black Cat movie. But all that yoga and meditation and punching walls seemed to be for nothing, as Amy Pascal has come out and said all their movies will have a root in the same world as Spider-Man, a world we like to call the MCU (run by Disney and Marvel Studios).
While speaking next to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, Sony’s Pascal said the world they will create with their own slate of movies will go towards expanding the world of Peter Parker/Spider-Man (now being played by Tom Holland), even though they may have a different feel and setting from the MCU:
Those movies will now take place in the world we’re creating for Peter Parker. They’ll be adjunct to it, they may be different locations, but it will still all be in the same world and they will be connected to each other
But the key factor is Spidey himself, and of course the question arises if Holland’s iteration of the character will be showing up in any of Sony's movies, the studio that does in fact hold the rights to the character:
There’s a chance! There’s always a chance.
Pascal would go on to say that what Feige and Marvel have done that’s so special is turning their movies into unique chapters in a book that must be read before continuing, and that’s something they hope to achieve with their movies. So far they have no movies to speak of, but their VENOM movie with Tom Hardy is hoping to begin filming this year for a late 2018 release. The character is one of the web-slinger’s greatest foes, so many have been dying to know exactly how a movie will work without the two together.
Though it seems Pascal wants Sony’s movies to have some link to the MCU’s Spider-Man, I wouldn’t go as far as to say the characters the studio brings to the screen will effectively be a part of the universe as a whole – in the same way Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and more are. What is likely to happen is their characters will be aware to the events that happen in the MCU, but won’t have any sort of contact with other characters the exist in it, other than Spider-Man. This could mean some crossover with Spidey popping into Sony movies, and vice versa, but I wouldn’t hope for Iron Man tussling with Venom anytime soon. That's too much studio intermingling, and we all know that can bring about the apocalypse.
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING arrives July 7.