We all know the story at this point; After Sony Pictures loaned Spider-Man to Disney for CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, AVENGERS: ENDGAME, and SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME, the two studios failed to reach an agreement regarding financing terms for future Spider-Man movies. Sony Pictures' CEO Tony Vinciquerra recently confirmed that "for the moment the door is closed" regarding Spider-Man's involvement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is something that didn't come as a surprise to AVENGERS: ENDGAME directors Joe and Anthony Russo.
Speaking to The Daily Beast, the Russo brothers explained how they fought for Spider-Man's inclusion in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. "We were extremely passionate about it. This is something we really wanted to happen, and fought a long time internally at Marvel to make it happen," Anthony Russo said, with Joe Russo adding that the task was far from an easy one for Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.
It wasn’t easy. Kevin [Feige] went through a lot. There were a lot of ups and downs, and he kept walking into our office and we’d go, ‘Look, we’ve got to do it with [Sony],’ and he’d go, ‘OK, I’ll figure it out,’ and walk back into his. He was looking for the way out. He wanted to open that door and have us go, ‘We figured it out! We don’t need Spider-Man!’ because it’s a lot of work to get two major corporations to play nice with each other, and the fact that it happened at all, we should all be dancing and celebrating that we got that little bit of time.
"I think that’s why Joe and I are not so devastated or surprised that there’s been a falling-out, because it was so hard to make it happen in the first place," explained Anthony Russo. As far as Spider-Man's future goes, Sony CEO Tony Vinciquerra has said that he feels Spidey will do "just fine" outside of the MCU. "Spider-Man was fine before the event movies, did better with the event movies, and now that we have our own universe, he will play off the other characters as well," Vinciquerra said. "I think we’re pretty capable of doing what we have to do here."
The latest Spidey flick, SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME, will hit Digital on September 17th, followed by a release on DVD/Blu-ray/4K Ultra HD on October 1, 2019.